Joseph Gordon-Levitt has hit out at Donald Trump, calling him a “clear despot”.
The actor will next appear in Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, which revisits the extraordinary trial of a group of anti-Vietnam war protesters after the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Gordon-Levitt plays the conservative prosecutor of the case. It also stars Sacha Baron Cohen as counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Panther leader Bobby Seale.
Speaking to The Guardian about how the aims of the Black Lives Matters protesters, the Youth International Party and the counterculture contingent meant there were divisions within the left-wing movement, Gordon-Levitt said: “There’s an argument that ended up playing into the hands of the right. And I think Donald Trump has leveraged that to his advantage in a way that’s obviously been effective for him, but is infuriating for a leftist like myself.”
He added that Trump is a “clear despot” and “completely in opposition to the liberties that my country was founded on”.
Gordon-Levitt’s comments arrive while the Democratic National Convention takes place in America.
Billie Eilish delivered a searing anti-Trump speech at the Convention, urging Americans to vote like their “lives depend on it”.
Gordon-Levitt also discussed his role as a New Orleans cop in Project Power. The film was mostly shot in 2018, before the killing of George Floyd and the mass Black Lives Matter protests in the US. “It means something different to be playing a police officer now than it did in 2018,” he said. “But, on the other hand, it’s nothing new at all. These same exact tragedies have been happening my entire life.”
