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James Woods Returns to Twitter with Guns Blazing, Takes Aim at CNN, Ocasio-Cortez, Clintons

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Conservative actor James Woods took no prisoners this week in his long-awaited return to Twitter.

Returning unannounced to the platform after an April 2019 account suspension and a lengthy self-enforced hiatus, the known antagonist made up for lost time Thursday night with wisecracks and one-liners for seemingly every left-wing institution and political figure of note — beginning with upstart New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Attached to the actor’s first tweet in nearly 10 months was a viral video clip of Ocasio-Cortez, a post-graduate bartender-turned-U.S. representative, belittling the American notion of “lifting oneself up by the bootstraps” as unrealistic, if not mythical.

“I’ve tried so hard this past year to live without the wealth of knowledge available on Twitter,” Woods quipped, “but this kind of blazing insight can be found nowhere else, so … I’m back!”

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“I was on vacation awhile, avoiding the news,” Woods wrote shortly after. “How’d the #Mueller thing work out? The #impeachment scam? Who won the #Iowa caucuses? Is #MichaelAvenatti still a contender for the Democratic nomination for President? How’s #JeffreyEpstein doing?”

Do you think Woods' initial Twitter suspension was unfair?

According to The Daily Wire, the 72-year-old actor ran into a spot of trouble with Twitter’s policy enforcement officials last spring, posting rather cryptically with regard to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump, “‘If you try to kill the King, you better not miss.’ #HangThemAll.”

The quote was paraphrased from American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson’s classic line, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him” — an allusion to the potential consequences and backlash faced throughout history by those who seek to unseat those in power.

That did not, however, stop the social media giant from labeling the tweet as threatening, and indefinitely suspending Woods’ account for an alleged violation of site policy regarding “abusive behavior.”

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Only serving to prolong Woods’ exile from the closing political frontier of Twitter was an unwillingness to budge regarding the platform’s request that allegedly “abusive” content be scrubbed from his account, which the actor felt represented an abandonment of free speech by the social media giant.

“Twitter demanded that I rescind my tweet paraphrasing Emerson,” Woods later said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “It now seems they have chosen to delete that tweet from my account without my permission.”

“Until free speech is allowed on Twitter, I will not be permitted to participate in our democracy with my voice,” he added. “As long as Jack Dorsey remains the coward he seems to be, my Twitter days are in the past.”

Woods has not yet made clear whether his return to the platform stems simply from a desire to once again be engaged in the public sphere, or from a genuine belief that Twitter’s leadership has corrected course with regard to free speech — but the actor certainly seemed willing to test the boundaries Thursday.

Met with immense support from thousands of fans, including the president himself, Woods was anything but indigent when it came to ammunition following his mockery of Ocasio-Cortez.

Poking fun at the left-wing establishment media’s response to the deaths of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Iranian terror financier Qassem Soleimani, Woods questioned whether the reporters at CNN were “in tears” over the Trump administration’s more recent termination of al Qaeda leader Qassim al-Rimi.

“I didn’t see the #CNN report,” Woods wrote. “Were they in tears? The Middle East is running out of ‘austere religious scholars.'”

Also unable to avoid Woods’ witticism were the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential primary candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Mitt Romney.

Woods was sure to remember former nominee Hillary Clinton, too, whom the actor joked in the wee hours of the morning Friday would make a dangerous choice for vice president — a clear nod to the long-time Clinton body count conspiracy.

“When the only thing separating #HillaryClinton from the presidency is your heartbeat,” Woods wrote, “start writing your will…”

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Andrew J. Sciascia was the supervising editor of features at The Western Journal. Having joined up as a regular contributor of opinion in 2018, he went on to cover the Barrett confirmation and 2020 presidential election for the outlet, regularly co-hosting its video podcast, "WJ Live," as well.
Andrew J. Sciascia was the supervising editor of features at The Western Journal and regularly co-hosted the outlet's video podcast, "WJ Live."

Sciascia first joined up with The Western Journal as a regular contributor of opinion in 2018, before graduating with a degree in criminal justice and political science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper and worked briefly as a political operative with the Massachusetts Republican Party.

He covered the Barrett confirmation and 2020 presidential election for The Western Journal. His work has also appeared in The Daily Caller.




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