'Someone in the White House is dragging the country down': Morgan Freeman slams Trump
Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman ripped into President Donald Trump during an appearance on MS NOW, claiming he was dragging the country down into a dire situation. Freeman shared that he still struggles to wrap his head around how a convicted man with 34 felony counts could become the president of the country. The comments came late in February, days before Trump launched military strikes in Iran.
In an interview with the "Last Word" host Lawrence O'Donnell, Freeman was asked how much the world had changed since his last appearance on the show in 2020. After asking for permission to use "profanity," Freeman went on to say, "Well, we have somebody sitting in the White House who's leading us down a s***hole." He added that he couldn't understand how a convicted felon with 34 counts of wrongdoing could become president. The actor was referring to the 2024 trial in New York, which found Trump guilty on all 34 charges in a hush money case. It was the first time a former or sitting U.S. president had been convicted of criminal charges. While Trump denied any wrongdoing, the jurors unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, ahead of the 2016 elections, NPR reported.
While it was a special ruling where Trump didn't face any fines or punishment, Freeman failed to understand how he could come back from that and win the elections. "How do you do that?" Freeman questioned. "That ruling went down before he stepped into the Oval Office. So it just doesn't make sense to me," the actor added. He then compared the current situation in the U.S. to Germany in 1935, referring to Trump's crackdown on immigration. "What was happening there? The brownshirts, those people that are marching through, particularly Berlin, and rounding up people, putting them in boxcars and sending them off," he noted. "Now this administration wants to build large detention centres," the actor concluded.
In his second term, Trump rapidly expanded the number of immigration detention centres and the powers of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to a report, the number of people held in ICE detention on any given day increased by over 75% in just one year, and the agency was using 104 more facilities for detention than at the start of the year, marking a 91% increase. When the host asked Freeman to share a few words to motivate the youth, the actor replied: "I don't know what I would say to young people." He then urged the youth to "vote" to change the direction the country is headed in, if they understand the current issues.
Freeman isn't the only one to question Trump's fitness for office. Following the U.S., Israel's strikes on Iran, the 40-day-long war, and the subsequent ceasefire agreement, several Democratic leaders called upon the Trump cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the President a "military moron" who cost the U.S. billions of dollars and put countless service members in harm's way, in a war that Americans didn't want.
