-By Warner Todd Huston
During the season premiere of the CBS series “NCIS: Los Angeles,” as the team conducted a stake out one of the agents found a battered and barely concealed Donald Trump Piñata in a garbage can then jokes “oh, he deserved it.”
As the NCIS LA team used a terrorist as bait to smoke out his associates, the members don various disguises to blend in with the public.
Detective Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) is dressed as a homeless man and while pretending to root through garbage cans comes upon a Piñata with a bight yellow shock of fluttering paper hair. Deeks pulls the Piñata out of the can a few inches and says, “I found a badly beaten Piñata.” Then shoves it back down while joking that the Piñata “deserved it.”
The 2 part, eighth season premiere aired on September 25. Part one was titled “High-Value Target” and part two “Belly of the Beast.” The Trump incident occurred near the end of part one.
This is far from the first time the NCIS franchise was seen attacking Republicans, conservatives, or those on the center right.
“NCIS: Los Angeles” has indulged slams on the right many times during its past seven seasons. In a 2013 episode, for instance, the main bad guy was an evil private healthcare insurance company. There were also tea party type characters cast in the role of villains not to mention a series of anti-capitalist tropes.
In another episode a Gadsden Flag-carrying Tea Party group is portrayed as a terrorist group.
In yet an earlier episode the Los Angeles team ran headlong into politics during an investigation into the hit-and-run death of a Democrat staffer. Naturally the Republican candidate is portrayed as the bad guy and the Democrat candidate seen as a selfless, caring, candidate of the people.
Finally, in a 2009 episode, a Christian is revealed to be a murderer while a Muslim character is absolved of the crime.