The latest show on Tenacious D’s Australian tour has been postponed after senator Ralph Babet demanded the pair be deported following an apparent joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
American comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass were due to perform in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, but the show – part of the band’s Spicy Meatball Tour – was cancelled without notice on Tuesday afternoon.
Concert promoter Frontier Touring said on social media that it regretted “to advise that Tenacious D’s concert tonight at Newcastle Entertainment Centre has been postponed”.
Video from the event showed (Kyle) Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles. Gass then appeared to say “don’t miss Trump next time” – just hours after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president injured.
Babet is a known far-right crank who rode in with the antivaxer movement. He represents not even mainstream culture-war conservatism (the Liberal Party, currently in opposition, does that), but what Australians refer to as “cookers”: the fringe of conspiracy theorists and aggrieved boomers whose brains have been devoured by the Murdoch media. The kinds of people who smuggle horse dewormer to treat their wind-turbine syndrome.
He also claimed that he went into politics as a ‘sacrifice’ for his country - the pay wasn’t enough for ‘all the suffering’ he’d have to ‘endure’ in parliament and all the work he’d be forced to do. He said he’d be much happier running his real estate business