Sutherland Tears Up: “Shameful" What the U.S. Is “Doing to Our World”

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, on Tuesday night, quoted and played some video from a September BBC interview with actor Donald Sutherland, including a tearful rant against President Bush and American conservatives: "We have children. How dare we take their legacy from them? How dare we? It's shameful what we are doing to our world.” Scarborough read how Sutherland, who plays the villainous Republican Speaker of the House on ABC's Commander in Chief, charged that Bush and GOP leaders “only care about profit. They will destroy our lives. And so it's something you have to care about if you're passionate about the lives of our children because we've stolen their future.” I tracked down the BBC's September 27 posting of a 25-minute RealPlayer video of the interview aired on the September 16 HARDtalk Extra and when asked about “mean-spiritedness" in U.S. politics, Sutherland bemoaned the censoring of Kanye West from NBC's re-play of the fundraising concert, as well as how, after the Dixie Chicks were critical of President Bush, a radio chain supposedly “organizes a purchase of all of their CDs and then has tractors running over them in Detroit. I mean, we're back in burning books in, wherever, in Germany."

Video: Real or Windows Media

See this September 28 NewsBusters item for more on Sutherland's role on ABC's Commander in Chief. See this September 11 NewsBusters posting for earlier, but similar, remarks from Sutherland.

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth caught the October 4 Scarborough Country item on MSNBC:

Joe Scarborough: "Let's move on now to actor Donald Sutherland. He's busy. Not only is he playing the Republican villain -- and of course the Republican is a villain on the ABC show Commander in Chief. He's also spending his free time lashing out at the Bush administration. During a recent appearance on the BBC, Sutherland called the current president vile, inadequate, a liar. But that's not all. He went on to say this, quote, ‘They only care about profit. They will destroy our lives. And so it's something you have to care about if you're passionate about the lives of our children because we've stolen their future.' And then, feeling emotional, Sutherland broke down in tears. Take a look."

Donald Sutherland, via BBC's posted RealPlayer video: "We have children. How dare we take their legacy from them? How dare we? It's shameful."

Apparently it doesn't take much to upset Sutherland.

In playing the video myself, I learned that Sutherland finished off that “it's shameful” sentence with, “what we are doing to our world.”

Sutherland also preceded the quote Scarborough read aloud: "They do not care about Iraqi people, they do not care about the families of dead soldiers.”