Amanda Knox Draws Controversy With Election Joke Saying Next Presidency ‘Can’t Be as Bad’ as Study Abroad in Italy

Amanda Knox is facing backlash for his take on the 2020 presidential election. As the race to the White House dragged out from Tuesday into Wednesday and then into Thursday, Knox, whose 2009 murder conviction in Italy was famously overturned, attempted to poke fun at the election by stating that “whatever happens, the next four years can’t be as bad as that four-year study abroad I did in Italy, right?”

Know had been studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, in 2007 when she and her ex-fiancé Raffaele Sollecito were convicted in the murder of British woman Meredith Kercher, who was her roommate. She spent four years in an Italian prison before being acquitted in 2011 by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. She was fully exonerated by Italy’s highest court in 2015. A man named Rudy Guede has since been separately convicted of killing the University of Leeds student and is serving a life sentence.

Although Knox’s Thursday tweet was meant to be a joke, many took offense to it, with many calling on her to delete the tweet. Some dubbed it “insensitive” and “inappropriate” and accused Knox of making light of Kercher’s murder. In one response, somebody wrote, “I’m sure the family of the murdered girl appreciate you finding the funny side….” Somebody else said that the tweet was “disgusting,” a third person writing, “I think this was a very inappropriate and insensitive remark.”

The tweet even drew backlash from controversial media personality Piers Morgan, who, in his own response, said that he could “think of a 21-year-old British girl named Meredith Kercher who had a far worse time than you in Italy.” He dubbed Knox a “disgusting piece of work.”

Piers’ remark eventually prompted Knox to respond, stating that she “occasionally” jokes about her “wrongful conviction & imprisonment in Italy,” something that she says she is allowed to do, writing, “I’m allowed to joke about my own trauma.” Knox said that she “didn’t joke about the Kercher’s. I didn’t kill Meredith. Rudy Guede did, & you know it. Stop exploiting Meredith’s name to victim-blame me. You’re pathetic.”