After being caught on video saluting Donald Trump at the Conor McGregor fight, Mel Gibson has been trending on Twitter. Mel Gibson saluted former President Donald Trump when they crossed at Saturday’s MMA fight. The Sun reports the moment unfolded as Trump walked by and waved to the crowd at UFC 264, flanked by bodyguards. Gibson, who appeared to be only a few meters away from the former president, gave a special salute. It occurred at Saturday’s UFC clash between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor, who broke his leg in the first round after his left leg buckled from beneath him.
Some dubbed Gibson a “patriot” for the act. The actor is known for his leading roles in Lethal Weapon and Braveheart. “Yoooooo!!! Is that Mel Gibson saluting President Trump?” one person tweeted. “The Patriot Saluting President Trump,” they later added, attaching a video of the interaction. Gibson was videoed at other points of the fight as well. “Hey, I want to see the rematch; you know best out of three,” Gibson said at one point. “I don’t care who wins. I want to see a good match, and I’m sure it will be.”
While the salute was trending on Twitter, it received mixed reactions. “Mel Gibson is who we thought he was,” another added. Gibson has become a controversial character in Hollywood after making a series of antisemitic comments for several decades. He was cut from Netflix’s Chicken Run sequel after being accused of making an antisemitic remark to co-star Winona Ryder in 1995. He asked her if she was an “oven dodger.” “oven dodger” refers to how Jewish prisoners were killed in Nazi camps during WWII.
Ryder added that Gibson asked her gay friend: “Oh, wait, am I gonna get AIDS?” Gibson strenuously denied the claims, saying they were “100 percent” untrue. “She lied about it over a decade ago when she talked to the press, and she’s lying about it now,” the reps said. She also claimed Gibson once tried to make amends for offending her. “Also, she lied about him trying to apologize back then. He did reach out to her, many years ago, to confront her about her lies, and she refused to address it with him,” his rep said.
Gibson faced criticism for his film The Passion of the Christ, which some called anti-Semitic. Gibson was forced out of Hollywood after his infamous Malibu drink-driving arrest in 2006, during which he unleashed an anti-Semitic rant. That was followed by leaked tapes in 2010 where Gibson screamed racist remarks, including using the n-word, at his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of one of his nine children. She later alleged Gibson was physically abusive. However, Gibson has a deep bench of Hollywood supporters, like close friends Jodie Foster, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robert Downey Jr., who urged the industry to give Gibson a second chance.
