SALON

Thursday, Mar 3, 2011 11:30 PM UTC

Matt Damon disappointed in Obama: “I no longer hope for audacity”

In a CNN appearance, one of the president's most vocal Hollywood supporters says Obama "misinterpreted his mandate"

By

Topics: CNN, Barack Obama, Celebrity, Television,

Matt Damon disappointed in Obama: Matt Damon

In an interview airing tonight on Piers Morgan’s CNN show, Matt Damon says he is disappointed in President Obama. “I really think he misinterpreted his mandate,” the actor says.

Damon, one of the president’s most prominent film industry supporters and fundraisers, calls him a “deep thinker” and other complimentary things, but seems disillusioned overall. It is Damon’s first public statement of disappointment in Obama since backing him for the presidency in 2008.

“He misinterpreted his mandate,” says Damon, appearing on Morgan’s CNN show alongside actors Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie and John Slattery, his costars in the movie “The Adjustment Bureau.” “He’s doubled down on a lot of things … In his State of the Union [address] he didn’t even say the word ‘poverty.’ You’ve got millions of people languishing in it.”

In videotaped excerpts from the show provided by CNN, Damon also says he “definitely wanted more” from Obama, and criticizes the president for not having a clear exit strategy in Afghanistan.  “I don’t think the mission there has been very well articulated,” Damon says. ”And I think it would help to kind of reframe the way we’re thinking about being there, and why we’re there.”

Damon also says the U.S. government has not meaningfully punished Wall Street for its “shameful” and  “dangerous” mismanagement by companies that “don’t make anything [and] don’t build anything.” (Damon narrated “Inside Job,” a muckraking documentary about the American financial meltdown that won an Oscar last Sunday.)

Are Damon’s statements anomalous personal expressions? Or are they a sign that the Damon-Michael Moore-Alec Baldwin-Janeane Garofalo-Danny Glover contingent identified in the 2004 animated satire “Team America“ is no longer inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt on major issues? 

Moore has been tearing into Obama for almost two years now, especially on Afghanistan, Iraq and corporate malfeasance.  Ditto Obama backer and longtime liberal activist Glover, who said over a year ago that he no longer saw much difference between Obama and former president George W. Bush on the same issues Damon raised today. “Whats so clear is that this country from the outset is protecting the interests of wealth and property,” Glover said. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

More Matt Zoller Seitz.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 108 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
283 points284 points | 58 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
256 points257 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
193 points194 points | 1 comment
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
81 points82 points | 8 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
56 points57 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations