Susan Sarandon has opened up about the backlash she received from supporters of Hillary Clinton after she chose not to publicly endorse the Democratic candidate who ended up losing to Donald Trump.
Speaking to The Guardian, the actress seems bemused of people blaming her for the outcome of the election. “I mean it’s very flattering to think that I, on my own, cost the election. That my little voice was the deciding factor,” she said.
During the Democratic primaries Sarandon supported Senator Bernie Sanders and then when he didn’t get the nomination, she didn’t throw in her support behind Clinton. Which brought a wave of hate towards her so much so that she had to change her number. “I got from Hillary people ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed’, ‘I hope you’re raped’. Misogynistic attacks,” she said.
Sarandon also said the backlash reignited again when she came out in support of Dreamers (immigrants who were brought to the US as minors, and who were protected from deportation by an Obama era-executive order, which Trump has recently revoked). “Recently, I said ‘I stand with Dreamers’ and that started another wave,” Sarandon explained.
When asked if it came from the right she responded with, “No, from the left! ‘How dare you! You who are responsible for this!’”
The actress also pointed out that in the end she chose to vote third party candidate Jill Stein, but called on people to decide for themselves. “I didn’t advocate people voting for anything. I said get your information, I’m going to vote for change, because I was hoping that Stein was going to get whatever percentage she needed – but I knew she wasn’t going to make the difference in the election,” she said.
So does Sarandon deserve the hate for choosing her own path? Is her refusal to choose what she and some people may refer to as “lesser of two evils” an offense? Or are the haters overreacting?
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