Bryan Cranston is calling for a new kind of politics that harkens back to a more bipartisan, 1960s style when aggressive name-calling wasn’t part of the formula.
The Breaking Bad actor, promoting his new film The Infiltrator, said playing President Lyndon B. Johnson in All the Way, both in an HBO film and on Broadway, has made him despair of how polarizing politics has become.
Cranston told Robert Wuhl’s Ipso Facto podcast about LBJ: “He knew all the players. They dined with each other. There was no, ‘They’re a Republican, I’m a Democrat. I can’t go out with them.’ They knew each other completely. So the next day when you’re hammering out a bill, you’re not going to throw that guy under the bus. You like him, you like his wife, you met his kids.
“I want to start a policy. Let’s begin this journey of not trying to demonize those who have opinions that differ from your ideology. If you and I were on the other side of the fence, I’m not going to put you down or say you’re foolish or an idiot for thinking that.
“There’s so much finger-pointing now and so much vitriol that we don’t get anywhere. Congress has their arms folded and they’re not budging.
“We have to stop that. We’ve made politics a sporting event where we think If you win that means I lose and that’s not the case. If you win and it’s a good idea for the country, I win too. We all win! We just have a different opinion of how to approach the solutions to the problems. That’s all it is.”
But seconds later, Cranston seemed to make an exception to his new diktat for Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. He said: “Trump is an anomaly to Presidential elections. I think he’s an anomaly to humankind!”
When Wuhl, a fellow actor, said he preferred Trump to Republican rival Ted Cruz, Cranston replied: “That’s like saying ‘who do you want governing your country? ‘Do you want Mussolini or do you want Hitler?'”
Cranston added of Trump: “He’s definitely a fearmonger.” His opinion of the Donald seems to have deteriorated in recent weeks.
In May he told CNN: “I will say right here, right now, on national television that I believe Donald Trump loves this country. I truly believe that and I know he does. It’s just that his approach on how to remedy America’s problems differs greatly from what I think should happen.”
