The White House fired back at one of television’s most successful comedy creators after Chuck Lorre turned an acceptance speech at a Los Angeles charity gala into a blistering and profanity-filled attack on President Donald Trump.
Lorre, the 73-year-old creator of The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Mom, was being honored Sept. 26 with Project Angel Food’s prestigious Founders Angel Award when he veered from discussing charity work to unloading on the president and first lady Melania Trump.
His remarks quickly triggered an unusually personal response from the White House.
“Chuck Lorre should immediately seek psychiatric help to treat his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital.
The response came after Lorre told the crowd that he would have preferred to use his speech to talk about his desire for a government that puts greater emphasis on Americans’ health and welfare.
Instead, he joked that his job as a comedy writer required him to say a few words about the “bloated orange” man occupying the White House, using profanity to describe Trump.
Lorre continued the roast by saying he wakes up and turns on CNN to see whether the president has suffered a heart attack — a line that drew attention because it crossed from political criticism into joking about Trump’s health.
The producer also took a deeply personal shot at Melania Trump.
After praising former first lady Michelle Obama as intelligent, educated, warm and funny, Lorre contrasted her with Melania using an insulting description that referred to her appearance, background and marriage.
The comments were unmistakably harsh, even by the standards of Hollywood political speeches.
But the White House response also escalated the exchange by invoking psychiatric treatment as an insult rather than simply responding to Lorre’s political criticism.
The entire confrontation threatened to overshadow the reason Lorre was onstage in the first place.
Project Angel Food honored the television producer with its Founders Angel Award, the organization’s highest honor and one it has given only one other time in nearly four decades.
The Los Angeles nonprofit prepares and delivers medically tailored meals at no cost to people living with serious and life-threatening illnesses.
Lorre’s family foundation has provided what the organization describes as transformational financial support, including backing for its expanded kitchen and campus.
The Sept. 26 gala ultimately raised more than $1 million for the nonprofit’s operations.
Lorre nevertheless made politics a major part of his acceptance speech.
He concluded with his own profane spin on the Serenity Prayer, accusing Trump of being a “Russian asset” and making an inflammatory allegation involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Those were Lorre’s accusations and were not presented with evidence during the speech.
He acknowledged that his urge to get laughs was behind the political material.
Anyone familiar with Lorre’s career, however, knows his criticism of Trump did not begin that night.
For years, the veteran producer has used the distinctive vanity cards appearing at the end of his television shows to share everything from personal observations to political commentary.
Following Trump’s rise in 2016, one card argued that Americans should not expect a political strongman to solve their problems.
“Big Daddy can’t save us,” Lorre wrote at the time, arguing instead that Americans should rely on their own “ingenuity and determined effort.”
He also criticized Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and later appeared to refer to the president as an “autocratic golf cheater” in another card.
That history makes Lorre’s latest remarks less surprising.
What is more unusual is the intensity of the official White House response.
Rather than dismissing the Hollywood producer’s comments as another celebrity attack, the administration responded with a personal insult of its own — turning what began as a charity gala speech into another example of how quickly political fights involving Trump can become deeply personal.
And in a night intended to recognize Lorre’s years of philanthropy, the nastiest lines exchanged between Hollywood and Washington ultimately became the story.
Discover more from Next Gen News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Lorre was preaching to the perverted Hollyweird choir…