Norman Lear: Donald Trump Is the Right’s ‘F— You to All the Clowns and the Establishment’

Television legend Norman Lear does not believe Donald Trump will become the next President of the United States.

In a brief interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the creator of television classics like All in the Family and The Jeffersons said that the Republican presidential frontrunner is just a product of America’s anger at the political establishment, but that anger would not be enough to “take him all the way.”

“I have enough confidence in the American people to believe that Trump is the middle finger of their right hand,” Lear told the outlet, echoing comments he made about Trump in October. “He is [the right’s] f— you to all the clowns and the establishment generally because [they believe] the leadership of the country is at an all-time low.”

“It’s their way of saying, ‘If you give us that kind of leadership, take this,'” he added. “But I don’t think it’s going to take him all the way, and I think they’ll retract that finger. They have to.”

Lear has made no secret of his disdain for Trump. Last month, the famously liberal but self-described “bleeding-heart conservative” said that his progressive advocacy organization People for the American Way would launch an initiative to combat “hate speech and anti-Muslim rhetoric” propagated by Trump and the other Republican presidential contenders.

“I haven’t believed — and don’t believe now — that the American people would elect Donald Trump president,” Lear said at his organization’s Spirit of Liberty Dinner in December. “I see Donald Trump only as the middle finger of the American right hand.”

In his interview with THR, the 93-year-old Lear said that conservatives have galvanized since the ’80s to become “louder and politically more potent”: “Jerry Falwell’s gone, but politically within the Tea Party and to its right, there’s a lot going on. They are a good deal stronger than they were at the top of the ’80s.”

Lear also revealed his own presidential preference.

“Nobody’s asked me formally, but I’ll take Hillary,” he told THR. “I think she’ll be the candidate. She’s the candidate that’s most electable, and I care for her. Anybody who knows me knows I’m not going to be voting for any of the cons on the other side.”

Lear is plenty busy these days. In addition to launching the initiative against Trump’s “hate speech,” he will also produce an all-Latino remake of his classic 1970s sitcom One Day At A Time for Netflix.