Actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman is applauding the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House as a liberating force for all those who value freedom of speech and expression.
She said it feels like a cloud has been lifted with Trump’s runaway victory.
“I feel good. I feel great, in fact,” Bateman told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“I feel like there was this kind of suffocating cloud that was kind of over us… Regular people who had questions about decisions that were being made were threatened subtly or obviously into silence. And I feel like that’s been broken, that sort of suppression has been kind of broken.”
Bateman, best known for playing Mallory Keaton on the hit 1980s sitcom Family Ties, recently went viral for referring to the last four years as being “a very un-American period” for free expression and that only “permitted positions” were accepted by the powers that be.
“My belief is that everyone should be free to live their life exactly how they want to live it. But not impinging on somebody else’s ability to also live their life as freely as they want to live it,” Bateman told Fox News Digital.
The actress has also pointed out during the Biden administration and even before, America has stifled as a nation once built on the very foundation of free speech for all without conditions.
The New York Post notes she has cautioned the concept of mob rule on social media flourished under Biden and how “any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes ” — be it about hot-button topics from Gaza to trans athletes in women’s sports or any form of social justice — “were held up to a very limited list of ‘permitted positions’ in order to assess acceptability.”
“Man, we just went ‘1984’ on ourselves,” she told the Post with an exasperated sigh. “Reporting the surveillance, surveilling each other. Come on. Why? Don’t you want to relax? Do you always want to feel like you are testifying? Do you always want to feel like somebody is recording evidence that’s going to be brought into a court of law? Why do you want to live like that?”
Bateman — whose brother, “Ozark” actor Jason Bateman, stumped for Kamala Harris — was in Washington, DC, on the night of November 5 , watching as state by state turned out for Trump.
“I was surprised to feel, physically feel, a relief in my body,” she recalled to the outlet. “I didn’t realize how uncomfortable the last four years had felt until I felt that balloon deflate.”