Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore compared President Donald Trump’s voters to someone who holds down a rape victim while they’re being sexually assaulted in an appearance on CNN Tuesday night.
CNN host Don Lemon asked Moore if he believes President Trump is a racist, to which Moore replied: “He’s absolutely a racist.”
“He’s not as stupid as people want to believe he is,” the Oscar-winner added. “He knows exactly what he’s doing, he knows the words to use and I’m certain the 63 million people who voted for him actually — the vast majority of them — love that press conference.”
Moore was referring to Trump’s remarks Tuesday in which he condemned the neo-Nazi and white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend at which 32-year old Virginia native Heather Heyer was killed when James Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a counter-protest march.
Lemon said Trump voters “take offense” when people call them racist for voting for Trump.
“If you hold down the woman while the rapist is raping her, but you didn’t rape her, are you a rapist?” Moore asked in response to Lemon. “Let’s cut the BS, let’s start speaking honestly.”
“That’s a very powerful and uncomfortable anecdote you shared, and people will think you’re comparing Trump voters to rapists,” Lemon said.
“Yeah, it’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?” Moore replied. “Because enablers of immoral behavior, of criminal behavior, it is absolutely criminal to stand behind the people that killed Heather Heyer, that beat the heads in of people who were trying to speak their minds in Charlottesville.”
“If you are there, and if it you participate — even though you’re not the actual person doing it — if you helped to put Donald Trump in office, you need to think about this before you kneel down and say your prayers tonight,” Moore continued. “Think about this person that you now have leading this country.”
“He was elected by white America,” Moore told Lemon, adding “they voted for Trump because they were angry. They voted for Trump because they wanted to throw a bomb into the system that hurt them.”
Moore also urged the white Americans who voted for Trump to “take a long hard look in the mirror.”
“If you still support the racist, you are the racist,” Moore added. “I’m not letting anybody off the hook here. White people who voted for him. America has to stand up. We cannot any longer mealy-mouth about this. Anybody who enables, anybody who votes for and supports a racist, is a racist. You are culpable white America, I’m sorry. But there is redemption for you.”
Moore’s appearance on CNN Tuesday followed a star-studded protest outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, led by the Fahrenheit 9/11 director following a performance of his one-man, anti-Trump Broadway show.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson