‘McCarthy style racist’: Trump shreds actress Debra Messing over Hollywood donor ‘blacklist’

US President Donald Trump has fired back at Will & Grace co-star Debra Messing over her call for a Hollywood Trump donor “blacklist,” calling the actress a “McCarthy style racist” and suggesting she should lose her job.

Wading into the controversy in a pair of tweets on Thursday morning, the president shredded Messing’s demand last week for the de facto blacklist, drawing parallels to the McCarthy era, when suspected communists were blackballed from their professions.

“Bad ‘actress’ Debra The Mess Messing is in hot water,” he said. “She wants to create a ‘Blacklist’ of Trump supporters, & is being accused of McCarthyism.”

The president also mocked the actress for another recent Twitter gaffe – in which Messing suggested that black Trump voters were “mentally ill” – observing that she “is also being accused of being a Racist because of the terrible things she said about blacks and mental illness.”

Messing apologized for the tweet earlier this week, calling it “reckless,” but for President Trump the label “McCarthy style racist” was apparently too good to pass up. He rounded out his morning tweet barrage with a question to NBC:

If Roseanne Barr said what she did, even being on a much higher rated show, she would have been thrown off television. Will Fake News NBC allow a McCarthy style Racist to continue? ABC fired Roseanne. Watch the double standard!

Though Trump has frequently sparred with left-of-center Hollywood celebrities, some entertainers were critical of Messing – and her Will & Grace co-star Eric McCormack, who initiated the blacklist idea.

Comedian, actress and co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg said “We don’t go after [people] that way,” adding “We can talk about issues and stuff, but we don’t print out lists,” and that such things drove people to suicide during the 1950s Red Scare. Goldberg is notably anti-Trump.

Conservative actor Adam Baldwin also panned the blacklist concept, dubbing McCormack a “cowardly liar” after the Will & Grace star backtracked and said his words were “misinterpreted.” While Messing has not offered a similar retraction, she did share McCormack’s apology post with the caption “I couldn’t have said it better.”

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