In an op-ed published by NBC News on Tuesday, actor Robert Redford attacked President Trump, writing that he has directed a “dictator-like attack …. on everything this country stands for.”
Redford started as many leftists often do, by writing in apocalyptic terms, “We’re up against a crisis I never thought I’d see in my lifetime: a dictator-like attack by President Donald Trump on everything this country stands for. As last week’s impeachment hearings made clear, our shared tolerance and respect for the truth, our sacred rule of law, our essential freedom of the press and our precious freedoms of speech — all have been threatened by a single man.”
Freedom of the press? It’s odd that Redford was silent when President Obama’s administration targeted journalists whom they opposed. As Yahoo reported in 2013:
The Justice Department spied extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two days of Rosen’s personal emails, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
No comment from Redford, apparently.
Regarding “respect for the truth,” The Guardian noted in 2016 that Obama wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the public:
The Freedom of Information Act (Foia), signed into law in 1966, is meant to give citizens access to information about the government agencies their taxes support. Less than two weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration set a new record in the percentage of Foia requests answered with either redacted files or nothing at all: 77%. That’s up 12 points from the first year of Obama’s presidency.
Redford never said anything.
Redford’s op-ed continues:
It’s time for Trump to go — along with those in Congress who have chosen party loyalty over their oath to “solemnly affirm” their support for the Constitution of the United States. And it’s up to us to make that happen, through the power of our votes.
One would guess Redford wants an all-Democratic Congress.
Redford pontificates that the Trump administration is a “monarchy in disguise”: :
What is happening, right now, is so deeply disturbing that instead of the United States of America, we are now defined as the Divided States of America. Leaders on both sides lack the fundamental courage to cross political aisles on behalf of what is good for the American people. We’re at a point in time where I reluctantly believe that we have much to lose — it is a critical and unforgiving moment. This monarchy in disguise has been so exhausting and chaotic, it’s not in the least bit surprising so many citizens are disillusioned.
Then, back to the hyper-urgency: “But this is it. There are only 11 months left before the presidential election; 11 months before we get our one real chance to right this ship and change the course of disaster that lies before us.”
And then, the actor who lived through the Clinton impeachment as well as the Obama obfuscations concludes, “Let’s rededicate ourselves to voting for truth, character and integrity in our representatives (no matter which side we’re on). Let’s go back to being the leader the world so desperately needs. Let’s return, quickly, to being simply … Americans.”
Yet as The Hill reported of Redford in September 2015:
The longtime Democratic supporter, who in a 2012 Huffington Post op-ed penned the reasons he was backing President Obama’s reelection campaign, said of Trump: “I’m glad he’s in there because him being the way he is, and saying what he says the way he says it, I think shakes things up and I think that’s very needed. Because on the other side it’s so bland; it’s so boring; it’s so empty.”