Facebook yanks down video of comedian encouraging his audience to assassinate Trump

Facebook has removed video of comedian Eddie Griffin encouraging his audience to assassinate President Donald Trump.

Griffin performed in a stand-up comedy show on Friday night at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, where he brought up President John F. Kennedy's assassination and then called for the audience of over 15,000 people to make sure Trump meets the same fate. The show also featured performers who called First Lady Melania Trump a "street whore" and a "prostitute."

Conservative radio show host Ben Ferguson was in attendance at the concert, and even live streamed parts of the show. He told TheBlaze that Griffin immediately launched into his anti-Trump tirade as soon as he took the stage and acknowledged he was in the city of Dallas. "Do your historic duty. You guys assassinated JFK. Next time he comes to Dallas, stick him in a convertible, drive him by the grassy knoll, get the rednecks out to the grassy knoll," Griffin said. "Y'all took out one president, you need to take out another."

According to Ferguson, Griffin began acting out an assassination as he continued. "Y'all need to put Trump into a convertible and take him out, or better yet, the driver should take him out," he said as he pretended to be a sniper. Ferguson's camera was rolling.

After he captured the comments on Facebook Live, the video began going viral. But Ferguson said after receiving a message from a friend the next morning asking where the video was, he noticed he had been logged out of his account. Upon logging in on his desktop, he received a notice from Facebook saying they had taken down the video because it violated community standards. The video had over 100,000 views before it was removed.

"They were clearly protecting the Left when they were doing something extreme," Ferguson said.

Ferguson captured other videos that night from the show that included several A-list comedians, and said the whole feel of the show was full of anger and rage toward the President. "This wasn't a comedy show, this was a comedy show turned 'let's kill Trump' show," he told TheBlaze.

Because Facebook Live videos are not saved on the device they are streamed from, Ferguson is left without a copy of the controversial comments he and thousands of others heard that night. But what Ferguson found even more shocking was the fact that with all-star basketball players and media members in attendance, no one in the media reported it.

"How was it that not one single news organization covered this; can you imagine if any Republican made these remarks about a liberal," Ferguson said. "These are A-list celebrities on tour with a guy calling for Trump's assassination, how can they continue to work with him? Where's the accountability here?"

This isn't the first time Facebook has been accused of being politically motivated in its treatment of users. Back in April 2016, Gizmodo reported that those who were assigned to pick the stories that went into the "trending topics" sidebar were instructed not to include conservative topics, even if those topics were organically trending on the site. Facebook later announced they would use computer programs to pick the topics, eliminating human subjectivity.