Academy Award winning director Oliver Stone told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in an interview that President Donald Trump’s presidency has been a “disaster” and that America “is sleepwalking toward a nuclear nightmare.”
“This is a little too early to tell if Trump lasts, but it seems he’s not to be the kind of president who plans, who deliberates,” Stone said in an interview, according to a Hill report.
The director made headlines in April when he bashed the president's decision to launch 59 tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield – the type of militaristic solution he promised to avoid during the campaign.
Stone recently sat down with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for a four-part documentary called “the Putin Interviews,” which will appear on Showtime later this year.
During their time together, Stone says he asked Putin about the accusations that he personally oversaw a Russian effort to meddlie in the US election, nd that the Russian leader answered “brightly” – though Stone stopped short of revealing what was said.
“Stone says he asked Putin about Moscow’s election meddling: “He answered very clearly, and I asked him repeatedly as it has become a big issue in the West and I think he answered very brightly, intelligently. I can’t tell you what he said, watch it for your self and make your own judgment.”
Americans, Stone says, "are not listening" to Putin.
For his part, Stone says he has never trusted US intelligence agencies, and that he worries US media and US politicians gave already poisoned Americans against Russia’s leader.
"What worries me is that we're reaching a dangerous threshold — we've probably reached it already — where the Western media and Western politicians have insulted him repeatedly, have said it's 'Putin's Russia.'"
Stone, 70, says he has “always questioned” U.S. intelligence agencies, telling the Australian TV program, “The CIA has always been a very dicey operation.”
“The Iraq war, the information they gave [then-President George W. Bush,] seems to be politicized intelligence in order to justify weapons of mass destruction. Again and again we see instances where the intelligence services, not just the CIA but the NSA too, and the FBI, have made huge mistakes and we’ve paid the price.”
In the end, it’s in both the US and Russia’s benefit for the two powers to get along because, as Stone notes, they have several important “shared interest.
The U.S. needs a “strong alliance” with Russia, Stone says, and could find common ground on some subjects, like terrorism.
“The world is in a very dangerous position and terrorism is an issue on which we both agree."
Finally, we note that the director has made films or biopics about a series of US presidents – JFK, Nixon and George W Bush – but for now has no plans to focus his creative skills on Mr Trump.
"If the Trump story may right now be a story about a man who is enamoured of consumerism or materialism and wants success at any cost, like Nixon a bit, and comes to the office willing to barter what is left of his soul in order to become president, possibly there is an angle there, but you know I'm not there yet.
"Let's let some years go by and see what happens."
via http://ift.tt/2qyxPdO Tyler Durden