Actor Michael Shannon has a theory about how Donald Trump won a decisive victory in the presidential election earlier this month — namely, that the United States is full of “ignorant jackasses” who voted for him.
In an interview with RogerEbert.com’s Nick Allen earlier this week to discuss his latest film, Nocturnal Animals, the 42-year-old actor called those who voted for the Republican candidate over Democrat Hillary Clinton “so goddamn stupid” and said the eight years of Obama’s presidency now “feels like a lie.”
“The big red dildo running through the middle of our country needs to be annexed to be its own country of moronic assholes,” Shannon told the outlet. “You can call it the United States of Moronic Fucking Assholes.”
When asked by Allen whether those who voted for Trump were always assholes or whether they’d become them over time, Shannon unloaded:
I don’t know how people got so goddamn stupid. But it’s really weird, because it’s like the last eight years, now it feels like a lie. Like, this has been festering underneath the whole time. Racists, sexists. And a lot of these people, they don’t know why the fuck they’re alive. They know it. They’re doing drugs, fucking killing themselves. Because they’re like, ‘Why the fuck am I alive? I can’t get a job, I don’t know anything about anything, I have no curiosity for life or the world.’ So this Trump thing is like getting a box of firecrackers, or something. It’s like, ‘Well, this will be fun for a little while, this’ll kill some time.’ Because, y’know, the jackass will be amusing on television, stay stupid shit. Make everybody clap. Hillary would have been too boring, I suppose. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened. It’s the worst. This guy is going to destroy civilization as we know it, and the earth, and all because of these people who don’t have any idea why they’re alive.
Shannon, who earned an Oscar nomination for his role in the 2008 film Revolutionary Road, said that despite being an in-demand actor, he hasn’t lost touch with the real world.
“I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I guess the one thing I always try to do, I always resist the notion that I’m sort of star or something,” he said. “I still walk down the street, take the subway, try and stay in the real world as much as possible. It’s so you don’t become some insulated pompous asshole who doesn’t have the slightest idea how the world works. Like Donald Trump.”
Read the rest of Shannon’s interview here.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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