Jack Black’s Tenacious D in hot water over Trump assassination comment

Jack Black’s comedy rock band Tenacious D has sparked outrage and had a show in Australia postponed after band member Kyle Gass made an apparent joke about Saturday’s assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Footage posted on social media from the band’s concert in Sydney on Sunday showed Black presenting Gass with a birthday cake onstage and telling him to “make a wish.”

Gass responded: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”

An Australian lawmaker called for them to be deported after video emerged of the exchange.

Band members Black and Gass had been due to play in the city of Newcastle, New South Wales, on Tuesday, but promoter Frontier Touring announced that the show had been “postponed” in an Instagram post.

While some commenters interpreted the exchange as a joke, Australian senator Ralph Babet said that the pair “should be immediately removed from the country” in a statement posted on X.

“To advocate and or wish for the assassination of a President is egregious, disgusting, filthy, evil, and not acceptable in any way, shape or form,” said Babet. “This was not a joke, he was deadly serious when he wished for the death of the President.”

“I call on the prime minister Anthony Albanese to join me in denouncing Tenacious D, Jack Black and band member Kyle Gass, and I call on the immigration minister Andrew Giles to revoke their visas and deport them immediately,” Babet said on Tuesday.

“Anything less than a deportation is an endorsement of the shooting and the attempted assassination of Donald J Trump,” he said.

Australian radio host Kyle Sandilands also criticized the band.

“I will not be participating in any future Tenacious D interviews,” he said. Tenacious D have previously appeared on the Kyle & Jackie O “In the Morning” show on KIIS radio.

According to Tenacious D’s website, the band is scheduled to perform in Brisbane on Thursday, before heading to Melbourne and Adelaide, and then onto New Zealand and the US.

On Saturday, US President Joe Biden condemned political violence in the wake of the shooting.

“There is no place in America for this kind of violence – it’s sick, it’s sick, it’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country,” Biden told reporters.

“We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”