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Donald Trump is like Brexit and voting for him is a 'legal act of terrorism', says Michael Moore

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker empathised with the plight of working class white people, but said the voting booth is not the place for 'anger management'

Feliks Garcia
New York
Friday 04 November 2016 16:33 GMT
Kena Betancur/Getty
Kena Betancur/Getty

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It comes as no surprise that progressive documentarian Michael Moore is voting against Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election.

But in his final plea to voters to lean to the left of the ballot box, he spoke in no uncertain terms how he feels about what a Trump vote means – calling the decision a “legal act of terrorism”, likening it to Brexit.

Moore appeared on the progressive news programme, Democracy Now, on Friday morning promoting his new film, Michael Moore in Trumpland.

He explained that he understood the anxieties of white, working-class voters who are flocking toward Mr Trump en masse, but said that releasing their anger on Election Day is not the right way to get the country back on track.

“I am around a lot of people who are planning to vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re angry and they’re angry for justifiable reasons. Because they went and got jobs in the automotive factories and they lost those jobs. And now if they’ve been able to get another job they’re working for a lot less money, and they’re angry at the system.

“And they see Trump as their human Molotov cocktail, where they get to go in the voting booth and … just whip him right into the system because he’s told them in his own words he’s going to blow it up. It becomes, then, a sort of legal act of terrorism.”

He added that pro-Trump voters have turned states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin into “Brexit states”.

“Brexit was passed in large part because the white working class of industrial England and Wales voted to leave Europe because they wanted to send a message,” he said. “Then they realised after it happened it’s like ‘Oh, we actually have to leave Europe now’.”

He added: “On Tuesday, we’re not voting to leave Europe. If you vote for Donald J Trump, you’re essentially voting for America to leave America.”

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