Acclaimed screenwriter Paul Schrader, known for writing the movies “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” posed a question to his students on Facebook asking whether he should give them an assignment to write a script involving the murder of President Trump.
“WOULD I BE IN LEGAL TROUBLE IF. I assigned screenwriting students to to develop a story detailing a plot to kill the US President? What if I specified the President’s name was Donald Trump?” Schrader .
“Would my students be in trouble for doing the assignment? Would my students be in trouble if they researched the assignment? Or am I in already in trouble in Trump’s America for writing this post?”
Any threats to assassinate the president are a violation of U.S. Code.
But it’s not clear if Schrader’s post constitutes an illegal threat since it was written as a series of hypotheticals.
Schrader has previously posted on Facebook about his loathing of President Trump, once calling for physical violence shortly after the 2016 election.
The screenwriter later said that the post prompted a visit from the Department of Homeland Security.
More recently, he equated supporters of President Trump to Nazis in a Facebook post.
“There are those who say Trump’s supporters don’t understand what is really going on. I’m afraid I disagree. I think they know exactly what’s happening and approve of it. They want a strong man rule. They don’t want the chaos of democracy,” Schrader wrote.
“They revere democracy in principle but hate it in practice. They are nativists. They are the crowds that lined the streets in Nuremberg in 1933. The question is: are there more of them or more of us?”
Hmm, how about a script where the hero kills hollywood writers.