Playwright of Trump Satire Jon Robin Baitz Assaulted by Trump Supporter

According to Vanity Fair, Playwright Jon Robin Baitz was assaulted by a Trump supporter in Washington, DC on Friday night. Baitz was in town to participate in the women's march on the 21st, and was having dinner with his husband and two friends. Baitz described a nearby table as full of "exhilarated and pointedly celebratory, loud happy Trump people."

Baitz continued, saying, "We were walking out to say goodbye, there were a few ladies who had a central casting, Ann Coulterian uniform and hair. There was a tiny popinjay of a man with a windsor knot and a pink tie. And this 350-lb enormous red-headed linebacker guy, who clearly saw a group of East Coast Jewish liberal homosexual sodomite Communists congregating in their black clothes saying goodbye. He went 'Sieg Heil' and saluted us."

The large man then threatened to kill them while insulting them with anti-semitic expletives. Baitz says he grew angry and the man starting pushing so Baitz pushed back. "He picked me up like I was a sack of rice, threw me down and I was covered in blood."

Baitz says he does not believe he was attacked for his work, a play entitled VICUÑA, currently running in LA, which describes the presidential run of a real estate mogul, rather he says the man who attacked him was drunk and looking to pick a fight with "a group of hipsters" who looked Jewish and liberal.

The playwright summed up the incident saying, "I was slightly shaken. Normally violence would depress me, but I wasn't depressed because the march was such a powerful antidote. I rather relish my scar."

Jon Robin Baitz's Vicuña is the story of a tailor of fine men's suits and his apprentice who find themselves increasingly discomfited by a client's unimaginable rise from blustering real-estate tycoon and risible reality TV star to candidate for the White House. As the election season culminates, the candidate returns again and again to his tailor's intimate Manhattan atelier for final fittings on a special, impressive suit. The tailor and his apprentice are forced to examine their roles as confidant and image-maker to an increasingly dangerous and possibly megalomaniacal contender.

Jon Robin Baitz has developed several plays at the Ojai Playwrights Conference including Other Desert Citiesand The Paris Letter. His other plays include The Film Society (world premier directed by Robert Egan), The Substance of Fire, Three Hotels, and A Fair Country, which, along with Other Desert Cites, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and winner of Drama Desk and Drama Critics Circle Awards, as well as a Tony nominee. He created the long-running ABC hit series Brothers & Sisters, and wrote and produced The Slap, for NBC in 2015.

Read Rebecca Keegan's Vanity Fair article here.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos