John Cleese: Did he really apologise for his controversial post about Trump and Hitler?

John Cleese has been part of the entertainment landscape for over fifty years. In his extensive career he had had a multitude of roles; from scriptwriter, actor to comedian. For most people, Cleese is the man from the 1969 Monty Python series.

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In 1988, he starred in A Fish Named Wanda which was both a popular and critical success. In 2023, that film is regarded as a classic. Though most ageing actors would enjoy the fact that their previous work is legendary, John Cleese is not one to stop and rest on his laurels.

In a recent turn of events, Cleese joined GB News where he was given a 10 episode series called The Dinosaur Hour. It appears that Cleese fits right in with GB News as he currently faces controversy concerning a joke / X post mentioning Donald Trump and Hitler. As publications report that he apologised, we take a look at whether or not this is true.

John Cleese, Trump and Hitler

On 26 December 2023, John Cleese decided to take to X and share with his five million followers a post in which he made two lists. The first list read:

Five ways that Hitler was preferable to Trump

This was followed by 6 examples. The second list read:

Five ways Trump is preferable to Hitler

This list only included two examples and the rest of the spots are left empty, implying that he could not find ways in which Trump is preferable to Hitler. This implication was pointed out in the comments as well.

As you can imagine, such a post didn’t go unnoticed and in 24 hours it gathered over 4,000 comments.

Did John Cleese apologise?

Following this initial post, which was shared at 2:06 AM, Cleese appeared to issue an apology, which was almost exactly 24 hours later at 2:10 AM. His apology said:

I would like to apologise for my last tweet

It was a very bad joke, especially on Boxing Day

However, this apology was followed by other things which question whether or not it was genuine.

What followed John Cleese’s apology

His original Boxing Day post received a lot of backlash but it also gathered a lot of responses from people with the same so-called sense of humour as Cleese. Those comments are what the actor has been reposting since issuing his apology.

Not only that, Cleese has also been answering to comments who call him out on the questionable nature of his post. For instance answering to the following reply ‘It seems like you’re saying that you prefer Hitler to Trump, fyi’ Cleese said:

The literal minded are always with us

It's a shame, because they miss so much

Moreover, in the past day, Cleese has been repeatedly claiming that his post was a joke. Joke or not, some X users have expressed their disappointment with Cleese after his post.

And although Cleese did technically apologise, he has repeatedly doubled down on his first post making that apology seem a little fake.

Meanwhile, an X user has pointed out something important: John Cleese might just be trolling his fans with the controversial post and his apology . If you're not familiar with the term, here is its definition.