Stephen King is considered something of an expert when it comes to horror, but it seems that, for the author of It, nothing is scarier than Donald Trump.
Except for maybe his supporters .
In an interview with the Rolling Stone , King was candidly political, expressing dismay over the rise of Trump, as well as disappointment in the electorate that catapulted the former reality television star and real estate mogul into the Republican candidacy for president.
“I am very disappointed in the country. I think that he’s sort of the last stand of a sort of American male who feels like women have gotten out of their place and they’re letting in all these people that have the wrong skin colors. He speaks to those people. Trump is extremely popular because people would like to have a world where you just didn’t question that the white American was at the top of the pecking order.”
This isn’t the first time King has been blunt in expressing his political views. In an earlier interview with The Daily Beast , King ripped into several of the Republican candidates.
“In the debate the Republicans had [in New Hampshire], Marco Rubio repeated the same talking point three or four times—and got his clock cleaned by Christie—and it’s almost like his candidacy has become a very perilous thing. It was a classic gotcha moment. But if it would’ve been Trump, it wouldn’t have mattered, because this guy can say that ‘Megyn Kelly was after me’ because she was on her period. He can say he didn’t mean that, but that’s obviously what he meant. He can talk about Ted Cruz being a pussy and it just bounces off! It’s like he’s bulletproof. Will he get nominated? I would’ve said the idea is ridiculous even four months ago, but now I’m not so sure. Then people are saying that if he does get nominated he’d never get elected, and I’m saying, well, hopefully that won’t happen. But who knows.”
When he gave that interview in February of 2016, King admitted that he had initially wondered if Trump’s run for the presidency was some sort of elaborate joke or marketing ploy.
“Trump leaves me speechless. When he came down that escalator to announce that he was going to run for president, I thought to myself that it was a smart joke, and it was a way of basically renewing his brand, refreshing himself in the press, and getting to the forefront. I figured he would run for a while, then drop out, and that would be the end of it. And instead, you talk about media-savvy, but he’s really the anti-media-savvy candidate. At this point, he’s said 40 different things that would have gotten him laughed out of the race if he wasn’t so outrageous.”
At that time, King’s biggest concern in the Republican field was Ted Cruz — perhaps because, back in February, no one believed that Trump would actually clinch the nomination. Certainly Stephen King couldn’t have predicted it — although Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone may have been capable.
But at that point, King seemed to think that between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Trump would be the more electable of the two.
“I actually think Trump, in the end, would be more electable than Cruz because Cruz is a fundamentalist Christian and it would almost be like electing the analog of an Imam—someone whose first guiding principle would be the scripture rather than the Constitution.”
Perhaps it is that potential to actually get elected that has Stephen King so horrified by the fact that Trump has clinched the nomination. In his interview, King said of Trump, whose candidacy he once described as being a “smart joke,” that no one is laughing anymore.
“I saw a poll the other day that said, Hillary Clinton is only leading him by three points. If that’s true, you have to go back to that time when he rode that escalator down and announced the presidency, and everyone thought that it was a joke. The press thought it was a joke. Rolling Stone thought he was a joke. Jon Stewart said, ‘Oh please, let him continue to run; he’s the best joke material that we’ve had.’ Well, nobody is laughing anymore.”
As for Hillary Clinton, it seems as though Stephen King is firmly “with her,” calling Clinton the only qualified candidate.
“Of all the candidates who ran this year, the only one who is remotely qualified to do the job is Hillary Clinton. There’s a lot of prejudice against her, just because she’s a woman. Having been raised by a woman and lived in a family where my wife has, like, six sisters, I hate that,” King said.
[Photo by J ohn Lamparski/Contributor/Getty Images]