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Bette Midler Calls Melania Trump an ‘Illegal Alien’ Who ‘Can’t Speak English,’ Responds to Controversy

William Earl
Updated ·3 min read

UPDATE: Bette Midler has tweeted again about her remarks, writing, “Well, all hell has broken loose because I said Melania “still can’t speak English” last night. I was wrong to make fun of her accent. America is made up people who speak with all kinds of accents, and they are all welcomed always.”

Bette Midler has stirred controversy for tweets she made during Melania Trump’s speech on the second night of the Republican National Convention. While live tweeting Tuesday evening’s speeches, the actor wrote several messages which drew ire, including, “#beBest is back! A UGE bore! She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage,” “Oh, God. She still can’t speak English,” and “Anodyne, anodyne, nothing but simple minded pablum. “I have to remind myself that I am very lucky.” I completely agree! You are one lucky Slovenian! And after all that surgery, you hit a kind of horrible jackpot, chained to an colossal idiot.”

After receiving several replies condemning her comments, Midler responded to her own “can’t speak English” tweet to address the controversy, writing, “Why not? Just giving them a taste of their own immigrant bashing medicine. I guess they’re not keen.”

Twitter users were quick to chime in that Trump is a polyglot and has U.S. citizenship.

Midler also opined on many other speeches from the night, including Larry Kudlow (“All these people talking about de-regulation; they are not noting that 40 million people are unemployed because of a pandemic DonaldTrump ruined. Maybe you are ok, but millions are starving. Don’t you ever see them? #LarryKudlow doesn’t, apparently.”), Rand Paul (“I remember when #RandPaul called #DonaldTrump an “orange-faced windbag” once. Did his neighbor beat him into a new person?”), and Eric Trump (“#Eric didn’t seem like he was on drugs tonight. I’m sure his brother and Kimberly refused to share.”).

Midler spoke to Variety last year about being active on Twitter.

“I participate in it because it can be fun,” she said. “I’m like a broadcaster. I like to broadcast, but I don’t really like the feedback. I’m quite sensitive.”

See some of Midler’s tweets about Trump below:

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