(AP Photo/Kena Betancur)
Ben Stiller was hit with a flood of angry messages after a tweet about his beloved New York Knicks basketball victory on Saturday was mistaken as a reaction to the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump that had disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner just minutes before.
The actor posted “Got it done” on X roughly 20 minutes after a gunman attempted to rush security to enter the venue at the Washington Hilton, which was hosting the annual black-tie event in its ballroom and where many senior Trump administration officials were gathered.
Stiller, a long-time supporter of the Knicks, had spent the evening posting about their 114-98 win over the Atlanta Hawks. But the timing of the message triggered a wave of backlash, particularly from pro-Trump figures who interpreted it as commentary on the shooting.
“Got what done?” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) replied.
Trump’s former acting director for the Kennedy Center Richard Grenell added: “Wtf?”
Those replies sent the tweet viral, garnering over 10 million views when the actor’s posts usually pull in the hundreds of thousands, prompting dozens of other users to jump to condemn what they wrongly believed was a take on the dinner attack.
Supporters of the actor quickly moved to try and correct the record while both Mace’s and Grenell’s tweets were slapped with a Community Note, reading: “Ben Stiller’s post refers to the New York Knicks’ 114-98 playoff win over the Atlanta Hawks, as shown by his preceding Knicks post and the game recap.”
The confusion unfolded in the hour after the attack as details continued to emerge about the suspect, 31-year-old Cole Allen of California, who faces firearms and assault charges and is due in court Monday.
Stiller himself did not address the flurry of attention the post drew and has since shared several other tweets about the Knicks’ win. The actor, a Democratic Party supporter, publicly criticized the Trump administration’s use of clips from his 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder in social media videos about the war in Iran.
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