The host of one of America’s most popular reality shows has delivered a blunt verdict on his adopted home—and President Donald Trump.
Alan Cumming, the Scottish actor who has called New York home for 25 years, told the Radio Times that living under the Trump administration had become difficult. “It is a fascist country and I’m paying taxes to it. It’s horrible,” he said, adding that New York remained “a different kettle of fish to the rest of America” because of its more liberal leaning.
The 61-year-old also took aim at Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, saying, “Make America like the 1950s again, more like. When Black people would serve you, you could do whatever you liked, and anyone who you didn’t like, you would get the boys to duff them up. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re creating.”
Cumming said the current climate had exposed something long buried. “It’s not a new thing for people to be so bigoted and intolerant—it always has been like that. It’s just been suppressed. What’s shocking now is how public and blatant it is and how comfortable people feel agreeing with it.”
He also turned his fire on former President Barack Obama, saying his optimistic public presentation had left Americans unprepared for what followed. “I love Obama, but I do feel he didn’t do us a favor by not letting on about the level of racism and fury he was subjected to. We all thought America was in a much better state than it actually was, because it’s always just teetering on the brink of awfulness.”
Cumming criticized world leaders for failing to “demand decency” from Trump, and expressed unexpected sympathy for King Charles following his recent state visit to Washington. “I never thought I would say this but, poor Charles. How low do you go?”
Cumming now splits his time between New York, where he films The Traitors U.S., and Scotland, where he serves as artistic director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
