Tenacious D’s Jack Black Criticized Over Trump Assassination Joke

Trump supporters are not happy with Jack Black’s band Tenacious D.

Following an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend, Black celebrated the birthday of his bandmate, Kyle Gass, on stage at a concert in Sydney on Sunday, and the duo set off a controversy.

After Black and the audience serenaded Gass with “Happy Birthday” as he turned 64, the Nacho Libre star asked his bandmate to “make a wish” as a man in a massive robot costume approached Gass with a candle-covered birthday cake.

Just before blowing out the candles, Gass jokingly said, “Don’t miss Trump next time,” prompting the audience and Black to erupt in laughter.

As news of the Tenacious D moment spread on social media, Trump supporters were quick to defend the former president from the comedy-rock band. “Jack Black you’re breaking my heart here. Unbelievable,” one user wrote, while another vaguely called for someone to “Arrest him immediately.”

Yet another wrote, “It’s gonna be hard to ever watch School of Rock again tbh,” referring to the 2003 film starring Black. (Gass does not appear in the film.)

Many comments reeked of antisemitism, repeatedly pointing out that Black is Jewish, and most of the responses also seemed surprised by the band’s political affiliations, despite the fact that Black has been a vocal supporter of Democratic politicians for much of his career.

Representatives for Gass and Black didn’t immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly’s request for comment Monday.

Trump supporters’ outrage at violent rhetoric directed toward the former president, even jokingly, is conspicuously out of step with the rhetoric of their chosen candidate. Trump called the Charlottesville white nationalists who killed a counter-protester “very fine people” in 2018, encouraged the shooting of Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, and cast doubt on the illegality of the kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that same year, saying, “We’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,” before an attack on the Capitol ultimately killed five people, and he also allegedly expressed support for rioters who chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” on the same day. He also mocked Nancy Pelosi’s husband after he was attacked in their home in 2023, and, of course, unforgettably noted that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” at a rally in 2016.