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Sean Penn is not holding back when it comes to his opinion of Donald Trump‘s second term as president. Speaking on Jim Acosta‘s Substack podcast, the actor said he is concerned about whether Trump will attempt to remain in office.
“We should consider worst case scenarios,” Penn said, after speaking about El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele. “I do think it’s a reasonable theory that Donald Trump is not unlike the spouse of someone who leaves him, perhaps for another, who then murders their former partner because if they can’t have her, nobody can. And I think Donald Trump and his solipsism may have that relationship with the world and that this destruction is in part a power play, and also a literal intention of his final out.”
Acosta then asked if Penn thought Donald would leave at the end of his term. “I think he might try to destroy the world before he ages out of life,” Penn replied.
Congressman Eric Swalwell, who also appeared on the podcast and is an executive producer the new film Words of War alongside Penn, added that there’s never a “succession plan” with wannabe dictators.
“That’s what worries me is if he doesn’t believe there’s somebody who can protect him, you will see him ratchet up what he’s willing to do to the country to protect himself,” Swalwell said. “Our only hope is a Congress that will check it, a press that will report on it, a court that’s independent to rule on it and a town square filled with Americans who say ‘hell no.’”
Penn joined Acosta to promote Words of War, which stars Maxine Peake and Jason Isaacs and centers on Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated outside her Moscow apartment in 2005.
“Those who think it can’t happen here either have not studied the certain indications that it will, unless people are involved and they’re educated,” Penn said. “We are tasting in our country what the Russians have gone through.”
The actor also took aim at Trump during a recent interview with Forbes about Words of War saying that “we’re absolutely there.”
“There’s no denying it,” Penn said. “Sometimes, people are cautious or have performative sobriety when it is in the media, where they don’t want to call it out for all that it is when this is a five-alarm fire. Let’s keep in mind that we remember in President Trump’s first campaign when he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and nobody would do anything about it. The Supreme Court has now agreed with him. Joe Biden could have had him assassinated and faced no charges. I would not have been for that, and President Biden would never have done that, of course, but when things go as far as they do when society allows what is happening here now to continue, that’s when you getWords of War.”
Penn has been a longtime critic of Trump. In 2018, he wrote a scathing op-ed for TIME calling Trump “an enemy of the state.”
“The solution to our current divisiveness does not live in the White House,” Penn wrote. “Instead, we will find unity only when we recognize that in our current president we have elected, perhaps for the first time in our history, an enemy of compassion. Indeed, we can be unified not only with each other but with Africa, El Salvador, Haiti, Mexico, the Middle East, and beyond if we recognize President Donald Trump is an enemy of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and every new child born. An enemy of mankind. He is indeed an enemy of the state.”
