Author and culture critic Bret Easton Ellis blasted anti-Donald Trump celebrities including Lena Dunham and Barbra Streisand on his podcast Monday, explaining that the “childish meltdowns” coming out of Hollywood and the media and an overall culture of “moral superiority” among progressives is contributing to the destruction of the American left.
“Barbra Streisand says she’s gaining weight because of Trump. Lena Dunham says she’s losing weight because of Trump. Really? You’re blaming the president for your own problems and neuroses?” the 53-year-old American Psycho author said on the latest episode of his “Bret Easton Ellis Podcast.”
In a half-hour-long segment on his show, Ellis said that the hysterical behavior of “morally superior wealthy people” in response to Trump’s victory has ruined his social outings, including at least two dinners he attended.
“You can dislike the fact that Trump was elected, yes, definitely, and yet still understand and accept ultimately that he was elected this time around,” he said, according to a partial transcript of the episode from the Wrap. “Or you can have a complete mental and emotional collapse and let the Trump presidency define you, which I think is absurd. … If you are still losing your sh*t about Trump, I think you should probably go to a shrink and not let the bad man that was elected define your self-victimization and your life. You are letting him win.”
Ellis also hit actress Meryl Streep over her now-famous anti-Trump Golden Globes speech, explaining that instead of discussing her accomplished film career, she chose instead to again “reinstate” the “moral authority” of the left.
“For some reason I started thinking about the cost of Meryl Streep’s gown at the Golden Globes and the $30 million apartment she had recently put on the market in Greenwich Village,” he said.
In September, the author warned that a “backlash” was beginning to erupt in America against “PC victim culture” and an “epidemic of self-victimization.” In February, Ellis tweeted his surprise that a majority of his companions at a dinner in deep blue West Hollywood had said they were voting for Trump.
During his podcast Monday, Ellis also took aim at what he called an overall “moral superiority movement” born from the left’s “warped” sense of moral authority.
“This faction of the left is touchingly now known as ‘The Resistance,'” he said. “Oh yes, the resistance. What is this resistance? There are posters all over my neighborhood in West Hollywood urging me to resist, resist, resist.”
“Some of us have been wondering: Resist what, exactly?” he added. “And who is telling us to resist whatever? The people who voted for the candidate who lost? I’m supposed to listen to them? Is this a joke? … Well, I’m certainly resisting the childish meltdowns I’ve been witnessing at dinners and on social media and on late night TV and too many times in my own home.”
The writer said that Trump’s victory had also caused tension in his relationship with his boyfriend, who he said had relapsed into drug use after the election.
“What was happening to my boyfriend was also reflective of the epidemic of moral superiority that has engulfed and is now destroying, eating alive, the American left,” he said.
Listen to Ellis’ full podcast above.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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