The White House has accused Star Wars actor Mark Hamill of violent rhetoric after he posted an image of Donald Trump in a shallow grave on social media.
The White House's Rapid Response account on X called Hamill "one sick individual" for the Bluesky post, which featured an AI-generated image showing the US president lying with his eyes closed, surrounded by daisies.
The image was captioned "If Only" and had a gravestone that read: "Donald J. Trump 1946-2024."
Mr Hamill, famous for starring as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films and an outspoken critic of the Republican president, had posted the image on his official account.
He wrote: "He should live long enough to witness his inevitable devastating loss in the midterms, be held accountable for his unprecedented corruption, impeached, convicted & humiliated for his countless crimes.
"Long enough to realise he'll be disgraced in the history books, forevermore."
In response, the White House's Rapid Response account posted: "This kind of rhetoric is exactly what has inspired three assassination attempts in two years against our President."
Mr Hamill then deleted the post and apologised, adding in a separate message: "Actually, I was wishing him the opposite of dead, but apologise if you found the image inappropriate."
It comes after a man was charged with the attempted assassination of Mr Trump in a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington DC last month.
In the days after the shooting, the president, Melania Trump and other US officials demanded TV comedian Jimmy Kimmel be fired from his ABC show.
He joked that the first lady had a "glow like an expectant widow" in a sketch parodying the dinner before the event took place.
Despite being filmed before the shooting, Mrs Trump said Kimmel's "hateful and violent rhetoric" intends to divide the US, and added: "It is time for ABC to take a stand.
"How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community?"
Kimmel responded to criticism of his joke by saying it was merely a reference to the couple's age difference, before saying on air: "I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject.
"I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it."
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The Federal Communications Commission has since opened an early licence review of Disney's eight ABC television stations.
The FCC's chairman Brendan Carr has denied the review was because of pressure from the White House.
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