Susan Sarandon—the successful actress who doubles as an effective advocate for the Bernie Sanders campaign—is having a rough week. Much of the mainstream media and anti-Bernie internet trolls are busy misrepresenting what she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday.
Misleading headlines and outright distortions have strongly implied that Sarandon is planning to support Trump over Hillary Clinton if the two face off in a general election. Others have misrepresented what Sarandon said and attacked her for hoping that Trump wins so that his really bad policies will make life so miserable for common folk that they will revolt.
While both of these positions would be disturbing in their own way, neither is true. Those who need further convincing can watch the interview here or read more about Sarandon’s “LOL that I would ever vote Trump” response here.
I’m not going to really spend additional time refuting the obviously overblown attacks on Sarandon, which by extension also serve as attacks on Sanders and his supporters. Instead, I’d like to focus on the hard truths she told in her interview. These truths are likely why her interview has been so mischaracterized and maligned by many pro-Clinton bloggers and TV talking heads who would like to distract from Sarandon’s real point during the interview.
When Chris Hayes—who is usually a pretty progressive MSNBC host—tried to bait Sarandon into either declaring her support for Clinton in the event that Sanders loses the Democratic nomination or admitting that she is culpable in the terrible things Trump might do if elected, Sarandon refused to bite. Instead she redirected the conversation and laid out her main point, which is that while Donald Trump is certainly dangerous, so is the status quo politics of the establishment that Clinton so closely represents.
And she minced no words in describing the very real danger presented by these establishment politics, saying “The status quo is not working, and I think it’s dangerous to think we can continue the way we are with the militarized police force, with privatized prisons, with the death penalty, with the low minimum wage, with threats to women’s rights and think that you can’t do something huge to turn that around.”
This is Sarandon’s point. Status quo politics, and the establishment that perpetuates these politics, are already dangerous. The fear mongering that presents us with the false choice of picking either the known dangers of the status quo or facing the new dangers of a Trump presidency is a poison to democracy. Susan Sarandon wants you to know that, and her critics do not.