What could Democratic Senator Al Franken and actress Olivia Wilde talk about at lunch? Trump and lies, of course.
In an interview with Philip Galanes, for the New York Times, the unlikely pair compared notes on lying, Trump, and how the new administration is, according to Wilde, “straight out of 1984.”
Of course, true to form, Philip Galanes introduced his two interviewees as “explorers of truth in 2017.” Considering Al Franken’s past dances with voter fraud, that title seems a little fake in and of itself.
But it gets better. Senator Franken began his part of the interview with a rant about how politics should be “based on actual facts and objective truth.” Senator, we’d like to hear a few truthful things from you once in a while.
Between the journalist and the senator, the two agreed: Trump’s campaign versus Trump’s administration has been all lies. Senator Franken started a rant with the statement, “There are so many different lies to unpack here.”
Wilde is making her Broadway debut in the stage production of 1984, based on George Orwell’s classic novel that, according to the New York Times, is “swimming in relevance” because of the Trump administration. And of course, Wilde considers herself an expert on just how relevant the plot is in this day and age.
Galanes introduced the idea of the play as something that was “impossible not to connect to . . . the inaugural crowd sizes and suspect budget math.” Actress Olivia Wilde immediately followed the tone of outrage and suspicion by saying that she joined the play’s cast as a way to “manifest my daily outrage.” She had a lot of outrage from the 2016 election, cutting off her hair so she didn’t look like Melania Trump. Now, as she put it, she can make sure her audiences “leave the theater questioning what we’ve been told.”
In defense of all the lies told by Democrats, which Galanes admitted is a real thing, the demand was posed to Wilde: “Make the distinction between a lie you can live with and one you can’t.” And Wilde responded in true leftist fashion, hinting that lying was really only a problem when it came from Trump. Never mind Obama’s deceptions about federal healthcare, those were meant for the greater good. As Wilde put it, the only real problematic lie is “when we start creating our own truth to support potentially dangerous decisions, like the president is doing.” Because nothing Obama did was potentially dangerous.
Wilde went on to express her continual state of confusion about the results of the 2016 election. How, she asked, could the American people vote for someone who “ran on opulence and showing off his gilded Saddam Hussein inspired apartment?” She just doesn’t understand. But she’s not worried. Al Franken’s new book made her “optimistic about our future.”
