A Hollywood actor who turned heads for his support of socialist former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is likening the coronavirus to an active shooter scenario.
During a Thursday appearance on The View, Sean Penn told host Joy Behar that “an active shooter is anything that is continuing to kill people.”
“This virus is the active shooter … and I think if we could wrap our head around it in that way and understand that it’s principally putting in the radical people of color, elderly people, indigenous people, but randomly selecting all of us, that we need to huddle around and make very clear decisions on how to approach this thing.”
Penn, who helped open a coronavirus testing site in Los Angeles, defined what he believes an active shooter means, lumping in the infectious disease crisis with mass shootings that have plagued the nation.
“I don’t think we need to attach a face, a personality, or what somebody was sending on their social media to be able to identify an active shooter,” he said. “An active shooter is anything that is continuing to kill people, and our brothers and sisters and fathers and sons.”
Penn said protesters around the country who defy stay-at-home orders were a “distraction” from the science surrounding the coronavirus.
“I get concerned, though I know of course, there’s a necessity for people to be able to make a living, I get very concerned when the attitude is without caution or without respect for those dead, dying, the hospital workers, and the science of this.”
Responding to a question from host Sunny Hostin, Penn criticized the new White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, for “speaking without any knowledge” about the coronavirus.
“Of course we have to test, if, if the idea is that human life cares, matters,” he said. “Those kinds of comments I think … normalize a disconnect between who we are and who we want to be as a country and as a people.”
