Actor Josh Brolin says he is not worried much about President Donald Trump refusing to leave office in 2029 and insists that the president is a “marketing genius,” all based on his friendship with Trump before the presidency.
Speaking to The Independent, Brolin said that he has a different feeling about Trump than many in Hollywood, and it is because he had “been a friend” of Trump’s before the New York real estate mogul ran for president the first time.
“I’m not scared of Trump, because even though he says he’s staying forever, it’s just not going to happen,” Brolin told the paper. “And if it does, then I’ll deal with that moment. But having been a friend of Trump before he was president, I know a different guy.”
Brolin noted that he met Trump in 2010 when the president-to-be was preparing to film a cameo in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. While Trump was on set, his part was eventually scrapped and does not appear in the final cut of the film.
The Weapons star said that he admired Trump’s building prowess during his celebrated real estate career. He noted that Trump’s $400 million hotel project “in the middle of a cesspool city during the late Seventies – that’s interesting to me.”
But he now feels Trump has gone too far in his quest for power, adding. “Now it’s power unmitigated, it’s unregulated.”
Despite that, Brolin said he thinks Trump shows a lot of genius.
The actor insisted that “there is no greater genius than him in marketing – he takes the weakness of the general population and fills it. And that’s why I think a lot of people feel that they have a mascot in him.”
He concluded, adding, “I think it’s much less about Trump than it is about the general population and their need for validation.”
The actor also warned people against assuming that his latest role as Monsignor Wicks, who preaches hate as religious piety, is influenced by Trump. Brolin plays Wicks in the newest Glass Onion series entry entitled Wake Up Dead Man, but the hate-spewing character has noting to do with Trump, Brolin says.
“I could make something up and say it was rooted in a kind of Trumpian greed,” but is just wasn’t, Brolin said. He added that once “Wicks garners a sense of power, then there are no boundaries,” he said.
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