Actor Bryan Cranston said Thursday that it’s “great” that Donald Trump is running for the White House, and also was glad that Sen. Bernie Sanders is running, which he said is injecting new ideas into the race.
“He’s a maverick,” Cranston told The Daily Beast. “He says what he wants to say, and it forces the other candidates to be more real, more honest and more open. That’s what’s getting through to the people — that this guy doesn’t give a s— and just says what he wants to say.”
The “Breaking Bad” star appeared amazed that Trump’s brash rhetorical style has struck such a nerve with prospective voters.
“If a sitting politician said the things he did, he’d have to resign,” he said. “For him to say, ‘I don’t think John McCain is a hero. Personally, I like when my heroes don’t get caught,’ it’s like, oh my god! Are you kidding me? How can you make a statement like that and not only survive, but thrive? It’s amazing what he’s done.”
Cranston said he sees Trump conforming to conservative ideas more and more as the election cycle progresses, showing that the billionaire is “becoming a politician.”
He also commented on Sanders’ run as a socialist and his attempt to de-stigmatize the word socialism. “I think it’s great. Even if I disagreed, I think it’s great that there’s a groundswell of thoughts and ideas,” he said.
Cranston was talking to The Daily Beast to promote his new film “Trumbo,” where he plays Dalton Trumbo, a Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted for his political beliefs (he was a communist sympathizer) and subjected to intense questioning from the House Un-American Activities Committee.
When asked if he thinks something similar could happen today, Cranston responded: “There’s evidence of this type of suppression of First Amendment rights all the time. It could be in the name of the Red Scare or it could be under the name now of ‘terrorism.’ There’s all this fear mongering of, ‘Oh, if we don’t do this then the terrorists will attack us,’ and people go, ‘Oh! I don’t want the terrorists to attack us, so let’s take away this right.'”
Fear mongering by politicians was a big concern of Cranston’s. He used one famous quote from former Vice President Dick Cheney to illustrate why it is so problematic for him.
“We saw that in the middle of George W. Bush’s presidency where Dick Cheney said something to the effect of, ‘If Bush isn’t re-elected, there will be another attack on American soil,'” Cranston said. “That’s nothing but fear mongering. And shame on him. If I ever get a chance to meet him, I would say those three words: Shame on you.”
