Hollywood will use any chance it gets to spew liberal talking points on air.
In an interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, a British outlet, director Steven Spielberg tried to draw parallels between the present administration and the Nixon administration as portrayed in his film, The Post. Spielberg defended former president Richard Nixon, blamed President Trump for fake news, and, of course, gave a speech about why he thought Oprah should run for president.
Spielberg told Snow that “1971 seems, when you look back at it, to be a current event again, in terms of the media, the news, journalism, coming under attack by the administration.”
He bashed the Trump administration’s treatment of the media.
“When they really don’t like something, they label it, let’s say, ‘fake news,’ he complained. Or if they don’t agree with something, they call it, ‘well that’s, you know, we have our own alternative facts.’ And it just distorts the truth and makes the truth, kind of interpretative.”
He continued to preach: “And the truth should be objective. It shouldn’t have any wiggle room for interpretation.”
Spielberg then pointed to Americans for the timing of his film.
“And when the American public starts trying to interpret the truth, I felt that this was the time to show what happened and what the consequences were when Richard Nixon tried to take on the New York Times and the Washington Post,” he added.
It’s an interesting side note that in the film, The Post, the main characters, Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee, admit to being friends with previous presidents, such as Kennedy and Johnson. They also confess that they avoided covering stories related to the two presidents because they admitted to being more interested in remaining friends with the presidents than covering incidents during their administrations.
So, does Spielberg think Trump is better or worse than Nixon? He answered, “Richard Nixon didn’t have a Twitter account, and Richard Nixon also didn’t have to lift a finger because he was not implicated in the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers never named Nixon.”
Then Spielberg went on to defend Nixon, after Jon Snow called the former president “as bad as we thought he was.”
“At the same time Richard Nixon did a lot of positive things. And uh, Richard Nixon was not by far the worst president we’ve had, in our country. He did do some very proactive things,” the director responded. "Things today that would be considered on the liberal agenda. Not on a conservative, Republican agenda. So you have to give Nixon credit for the good that he did do as president. But the damage that he did is what our film focuses on.”
Spielberg also pledged his allegiance to a theoretical Oprah run in 2020. He was full of praise for her:
“I can certainly see Oprah Winfrey running. Of course, it’s totally up to her. You know, she was effective in helping to elect Barack Obama. She’s been on television for over 35 years, speaking about women’s issues and issues about children, and work place, you know, inequalities, and she’s built bridges between different ideologies, and she’s a peacemaker. And I’ve always referred to her as an ambassador of empathy. And our country needs some...a good dose of empathy right now.”
