Actress Jane Fonda called COVID-19 “God’s gift to the left,” provoking backlash from conservatives.
The video: Fonda, 82, a left-wing activist and Biden campaign surrogate, was speaking during a Zoom call last Friday with Maurice Mitchel, the national director of the progressive Working Families Party.
- Her comments were brought to widespread attention by a Twitter user on Wednesday.
“I just think that COVID is God’s gift to the left ,” Fonda said while decrying President Donald Trump’s “fascism.”
- “That’s a terrible thing to say. I think it was a very difficult thing to send down to us, but it has ripped the Band-Aid off who [Trump] is and what he stands for and what is being done to average people and working people in this country.”
- Fonda described the coronavirus pandemic as an “existential crossroads” for humanity to address issues like climate change, and added: “What a great gift, what a tremendous opportunity, we are so lucky, we have to use it with every ounce of intelligence and courage and wherewithal we have.”
The reaction: Actor James Woods was among the conservative Twitter commentators who faulted Fonda for insensitivity to U.S. death toll from the pandemic — a charge more typically leveled against the Trump administration from the left.
Others, like the Washington Free Beacon, linked Fonda’s remarks to her support for America’s enemies in the Vietnam War which earned her the monicker “Hanoi Jane.”
A number of progressives defended Fonda, who has been celebrated for her advocacy of climate reforms and feminist causes during the Trump presidency.
But to many on the right, Fonda seemed to have “said the quiet part out loud.”
- Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said she had confirmed claims by Trump and his supporters that “the Left” is trying to use the coronavirus to end his presidency.
The president on Wednesday also identified a divine purpose behind COVID-19, though he only spoke to his own bout of the disease.
- In a Twitter video, Trump said, “I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it.”
- Trump, outraging critics, said he plans to make an experimental antibody cocktail he was treated with available to anyone who needs it.
