Legendary Hollywood actor and comedian Bill Murray praised the GOP tax cuts law, slammed identity politics, and applauded the reckoning against sexual abusers in Hollywood in a CNBC interview.
“How can Kristen Wiig make everyone laugh?” Murray asked of the Saturday Night Live star, denouncing an identity politics he said makes being a comedian “harder and harder.”
“She’s not thinking about being political, she’s thinking about what resonates and what is common to all of us, and I think that’s harder and harder to do because people are trying to win their point of view as opposed to saying ‘What if I spoke to everyone?'”
Murray, who, last month, played former White House chief strategist and Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon on SNL, defended longtime SNL scribe Jim Downey.
“He’s saying: ‘No, I just think the way the Democrats handle things is poor where they try to pick out little pieces of a population,” Murray said of Downey. ‘”We represent the Hispanics, we represent the LGBT or something.’ And they’re not speaking to everyone all at once. And It’s almost demeaning to say, ‘I’m choosing you because you’re a splinter group, or a certain minority group.’ There’s almost a resentment that some how you’re separated, again, by a politician.”
“‘You’re my people,” Murray said. ‘”I’m in control of you, I represent you,’ instead of thinking that each citizen has a right to be respected as a citizen first, under the laws of the country.”
The Golden Globe and Emmy-winning actor, whose iconic film career is marked by timeless classics like Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day, also shared his thoughts on the ever-widening sexual misconduct scandal that has rocked the entertainment industry.
“If people are monstrous, it eventually comes back,” Murray said. “We get justice, but we don’t get it when we want it. …This is unusual. People are getting their justice rather quickly.”
“It’s interesting when this kind of movement happens,” Murray added. “It creates a kind of compost or fertilizer to make the next stage happen. … Obviously, things swing back and forth.”
The 67-year-old veteran star also called the recently-passed GOP tax cuts plan “fantastic.”
“The change in the tax law is a great thing for corporations, it’s a fantastic thing,” Murray said. “I don’t pretend to understand what that will mean to the future in terms of the economy or what the budget will have to do with what people call entitlements.”
“In the first step, it’s made things easier,” he explained. “I think people feel like there was too much regulation, and yet I hope they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater when breaking down regulations.”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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