Mel Gibson gives Kamala Harris a scathing assessment: ‘She’s got the IQ of a fence post’
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Mel Gibson has given a scathing assessment of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and reaffirmed his support for Donald Trump ahead of the US election.
The often outspoken Mad Max actor, who has been defended by his collaborators following antisemitic outbursts, has been a supporter of Trump for several years now, even saluting the former president at a UFC event in 2021.
The 68-year-old has now shared his thoughts on the forthcoming election battle on 5 November, with the two candidates practically level in the polls.
Speaking to TMZ as he walked through LAX on Thursday (24 October), Gibson was asked his thoughts on the election, to which the Braveheart star jokingly replied: “Whoa, that’s a big question.”
“I don’t think it’s going to surprise anyone who I’ll vote for,” he added.
The What Women Want actor then switched his attention to Harris, for whom he had some choice words.
“I know what it’ll be like if we let her in and that ain’t good,” said Gibson. “Miserable track record – appalling track record. No policies to speak of. And she’s got the IQ of a fence post.”
When asked about his political views in the past, the Australian Oscar-winner said during a 2020 interview with Fox News: “Who the hell cares what I think? I’m not an expert – what am I qualified to talk about?”
Earlier this month, Andrew Garfield, who was the lead actor in Gibson’s 2016 war film Hacksaw Ridge, defended working with him, saying: “He’s done a lot of beautiful healing with himself.”
In an interview with People, Garfield continued: “And thank God. Because he’s an amazing filmmaker, and I think he deserves to make films. He deserves to tell stories because he has a very, very big, compassionate heart.”
Gibson, who is prepping sequels to The Passion of the Christ and Lethal Weapon, was arrested for suspected drink driving in Malibu in 2006, and made antisemitic remarks to a policeman, for which he later apologised, claiming that the comments were “blurted out in a moment of insanity”.
According to a police report, Gibson asked the officer if he was Jewish and said: “F***ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”
At the time, Gibson said there is “no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of antisemitic remark”.
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Opinion
Why I’m not quitting the Post
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The Washington Post Building on K Street NW in D.C. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
On Thursday night, at the Pulitzer Prize Awards Ceremony in New York, my Post colleagues were feted for winning top honors in three categories. A series, assembled by more than 75 Post journalists on the AR-15’s singular capacity to kill, won for national reporting. And on the editorial side, The Post had a double win: In the commentary category, Vladimir Kara-Murza, writing from prison in Russia, won for his columns demanding democracy in his country; in the editorial writing category, David E. Hoffman won for his series on the “Annals of Autocracy” and the global battle for democracy.
Yet the next day, my colleagues and I were deluged with emails and messages from readers on social media. Many said they love our work but are canceling their subscriptions. Still others demanded that we all quit:
“Your lack of resignation is a silent endorsement of Donald Trump for President.”
“The Washington Post has gone from All The President's Men to All The Dictator's Lapdogs.”
“This paper can never be trusted to bring truth to power.”
“Without resigning you are basically endorsing Hitler.”
A Facebook friend of my wife’s, in an overwrought message, said that those who keep their Post subscriptions are like Neville Chamberlain appeasing Nazis and that we (Nazi) Post journalists should be put out of work like “coal miners who lose their income when polluting mines close.”
What happened between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, of course, was the Post’s non-endorsement in the presidential race. As The Post reported, owner Jeff Bezos, in effect, directed the newspaper not to publish its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
I get the anger, and I share it. I helped organize the statement Post columnists published calling Bezos’s action “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.” Most of my colleagues, I’m sure, agree with our revered former editor, Marty Baron, who called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” It’s certainly the owner’s prerogative to adopt a general no-endorsement policy, and it might well have been reasonable if it had been done outside of the political cycle (such endorsements long ago stopped swaying voters), but coming 11 days before the election, it gave the appearance of cowering before a wannabe dictator to protect Bezos’s business interests — particularly because Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the same day.
But I can’t endorse the calls to cancel The Post. Boycotting the newspaper won’t hurt Bezos, whose fortune comes not from Post subscribers but from Amazon Prime members and Whole Foods shoppers. His ownership and subsidization of The Post is just pocket change to him. And if readers want to strike a blow for democracy, they’d achieve more by knocking on doors and making calls for Harris for the next eight days. But boycotting The Post will hurt my colleagues and me. We lost $77 million last year, which required a(nother) round of staff cuts through buyouts. The more cancellations there are, the more jobs will be lost, and the less good journalism there will be.
If Trump wins next week, the institutions of our democracy will be under threat like never before. Newspapers and other media outlets have been decimated as our business model collapsed, and disinformation has filled the vacuum. Trump has made clear he will come after us in a second term: “They’re so nasty. They’re so evil. They are actually the enemy of the people,” he said Saturday. There are noble efforts underway to build nonprofit journalism models to replace corporate ownership, but these are not yet at a scale where they can substitute for existing media. This is why I’m not quitting The Post. Those of us working in the news business for the last quarter century know what it’s like to “watch the things you gave your life to, broken/ And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools,” as Kipling put it. For all its flaws, The Post is still one of the strongest voices for preserving our democratic freedoms.
Of course, if Friday’s non-endorsement announcement is followed by other demands from our owner that we bend the knee to Trump, that’s a different matter. If this turns out to be the beginning of a crackdown on our journalistic integrity — if journalists are ordered to pull their punches, called off sensitive stories or fired for doing their jobs — my colleagues and I will be leading the calls for Post readers to cancel their subscriptions, and we’ll be resigning en masse.
But except for the endorsement debacle, Bezos hasn’t interfered in The Post’s journalism in such a way. The newspaper has expanded significantly since he bought it in 2013 and won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including for its coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, its exposure of Trump’s phony charitable work, revelations about secret surveillance at the National Security Agency and lapses at the Secret Service, and its reporting on police shootings, poverty, abortion, racial justice and climate change. Just two weeks ago, The Post won two Loeb Awards, the top prize in business journalism, including for my colleagues Heather Long and Sergio Peçanha’s editorials on post-pandemic revival of America’s downtowns. All three finalists in the commentary category were from The Post.
Compared to them, I’m just a hack who keeps howling into the wind about MAGA attacks on our democratic norms. But for the past nine years, I’ve been labeling Trump a racist and a fascist, adding more evidence each week — and not once have I been stifled. I’ve never even met nor spoken to Bezos.
The moment I’m told I can no longer report the truth will be the moment to find other work. Until then, I’ll keep writing. I hope you’ll keep reading.
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A mystery swirls around Capitol poop statue: Who took Pelosi’s nameplate?
The former House Speaker’s nameplate was broken off of the statue, which was intended to “honor” the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
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People stop to take photos of a satirical art installation that “honors” those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on the National Mall in on Oct. 24. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The bronze statue of poop atop a replica of Nancy Pelosi’s congressional desk has become something of a conversation piece since its installation on the National Mall last week.
On Sunday, there was a new reason to yak about the cheeky memorial to the Jan. 6 insurrection: Pelosi’s nameplate was missing — broken off, along with a few letters from a plaque honoring the “brave men and women” who “broke into” the U.S. Capitol “to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”
Had vandals decided to add their own untamed touch to the art?
A security guard who said he was there to watch over the installation declined to comment. The National Park Service, which granted the permit for the art to be displayed on the Mall, did not immediately respond to an email. Julia Jimenez-Pyzik, who requested the permit, did not answer text and phone messages seeking comment.
Chris Guthrie, 67, a retired computer programmer, showed up for a second day to photograph the installation, and took it upon himself to tell other visitors what was missing.
“You can see it was removed,” he said, pointing out the darkened spot on the desk where Pelosi’s nameplate had been to J.K. Leo, 53, of Chantilly, who stopped to take photos.
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The nameplate of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi was on the desk in the statue's original installation. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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A close-up of the area where the nameplate once sat. (Paul Schwartzman for The Washington Post)
“That’s cool, best monument yet,” Leo said before pausing to consider the installation’s message. “It’s a statement of what we are as a country. It should be in a place where we can freely express ourselves.”
His idea of free expression, though, does not include vandalism.
“That’s destruction of property,” he said. “It should be what it is.”
The installation, facing the Capitol on 3rd Street NW, is titled “The Resolute Desk,” according to the NPS permit, which says that it arrived on the mall Oct. 24 and is to remain until Wednesday. Under “purpose,” the applicant wrote that the desk “represents the heart of democracy” and that it stood “firm” when “rioters broke in to destroy those ideals.”
Sarah Parker, 53, an economist who lives on Capitol Hill, had heard from neighbors that Pelosi’s nameplate had been removed before stopping for her own look Sunday.
Eying the plaque, she saw more damage where it said: “President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’”
The letters r-a-t had been removed from “celebrates,” along with “6,″ leaving white outlines instead.
The “o” in “election” was also gone.
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Damage on the statue's plaque. (Paul Schwartzman for The Washington Post)
“I’m actually astonished there’s not more damage,” Porter said.
“I figured someone would come with a baseball bat,” Guthrie said.
Buddy Taylor, 60, an engineer who lives in Bowie, said the missing letters and nameplate suggests “we’re annoying the right people.”
A police officer stopped for a look at what everyone was photographing. He chuckled, then said he knew nothing about any reports of vandalism, and went on his way.
Just then, Jeannie O’Brien, 51, a designer who lives in Northwest Washington, arrived and started taking her own photos. She encouraged a passerby to compel her dog to leave an appropriately fitting deposit to enhance her photo opportunity.
“No!” the woman replied. “This is public land, we have to respect it!”
O’Brien gazed at the damage to the installation.
“I’d love to know who did it,” she said.
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
