Avatar director James Cameron despairs at the state America and says he left to start life anew in New Zealand because he seeks “sanity,” citing how the USA handled the COVID pandemic as emblematic of its failings.
He spoke bluntly on a recent episode of “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” about relocating to the Land of the Long White Cloud where he both lives and spent years working on the Avatar movies.
Variety reports Cameron first addressed his reason for heading south of the equator to seek shelter in a country that has a population of 23.3 million sheep and just over five million people:
After the pandemic hit… [New Zealand] had eliminated the virus completely.
They actually eliminated the virus twice. The third time when it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through. But fortunately, they already had a 98% vaccination rate. This is why I love New Zealand.
People there are, for the most part, sane as opposed to the United States where you had a 62% vaccination rate, and that’s going down – going the wrong direction.
“Are you kidding me? Where would you rather live?” Cameron continued as he praised New Zealand, its people, and their obedient nature as they followed orders when it came to dealing with COVID.
“A place that actually believes in science and is sane and where people can work together cohesively to a common goal, or a place where everybody’s at each other’s throats, extremely polarized, turning its back on science and basically would be in utter disarray if another pandemic appears.”
As Breitbart News reported, New Zealand slid into outright authoritarianism during the coronavirus pandemic with some of the world’s strictest lockdowns and wound up with surges of Wuhan coronavirus infection and death anyway.
For example, the socialist government of then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered a three-day snap lockdown in August 2021 over a single case of coronavirus transmission.
New Zealand had some of the toughest lockdown rules in the world during the coronavirus pandemic under hard-left Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
The Variety report notes when Graham Bensinger suggested the U.S. is still “a fantastic place to live,” Cameron questioned him by saying: “Is it?”
“But New Zealand is just stunningly beautiful,” Bensinger noted, to which Cameron replied: “I’m not there for scenery, I’m there for the sanity.”
The Oscar-winning director added that he feels “safer” in New Zealand these days and not being in a country with President Donald Trump is to him a blessing, noting: “I certainly feel like I don’t have to read about [Trump] on the front page every single day. And it’s just sickening. There’s something nice about the New Zealand outlets — at least they’ll put it on page three.
“I just don’t want to see that guy’s face any more on the front page of the paper. It’s inescapable there, it’s like watching a car crash over and over and over.”
This is not the first time Cameron has trashed Trump.
Last December he scolded the president for refusing to accept the doomsaying of global warming alarmists while calling Trump a “narcissistic asshole” for not relenting to the climate change mob, as Breitbart News reported.
The famed director disgorged his vitriol in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter where he claimed Trump’s moves to thwart global warming extremism is sending humanity “backwards.”
“I’m frustrated because the human race seems to be delusional about what they think is going to happen next. We are going backwards,” Cameron exclaimed.
The Terminator creator ripped Trump as the “most narcissistic asshole in history since fucking Nero.” And added, “Yeah, you can quote that.”
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