Actor Matt Damon believes presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lacks the “temperament” to be U.S. president and predicts “disaster” if Americans elect him in November.
In an appearance on Australian morning show Sunrise, the 45-year-old Jason Bourne star said Trump’s chances of winning the White House are “frighteningly high.”
“As far as I’m concerned I just don’t think he has the temperament, not even close to the temperament necessary to have that amount of power,” Damon said. “He’s just too petty and thin-skinned.”
The Oscar-winner said people are right to feel that the economy no longer works for them, but they are wrong to support Trump for that reason.
“These are very, very scary times and there’s this kind of understandable retreat into nativism and isolationism and people are upset and feeling that the economy’s not working for them,” Damon said. “But to protest by electing him would be a disaster.”
Damon said he doesn’t know how Trump will garner the same amount of support that former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney received in 2012.
“Romney had about 62 million votes, I think, and lost in 2012. I think Trump’s got about 13 million in this primary,” he said. “I don’t know where the other 50 million votes are going to come from. But that’s a lot of people pushing the self-destruct button.”
Comparing Trump’s political ascent to Britain’s recent vote to leave the European Union, Damon said we are living in a time that “looks the most like the history that I’ve read about, of any time that I’ve ever been alive for.”
“It looks like we’re 80 years in the past, and these same feelings are resounding everywhere,” he added.
During the same press junket for his latest high-powered action film, Damon also said he wished America could adopt an Australian-style gun control policy.
“You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly,” he said.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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