By Ben Monié, Larry King Now
During the course of his conversation with Larry King, Jay Roach is particularly solicitous when the broadcaster asks him what he thinks about Donald Trump’s seemingly unstoppable path towards the Republican nomination. “I said something in one interview when we were releasing Trumbo,” he explains. “I said, ‘Isn’t wisdom a minimum basic requirement for leadership in our country?’ Do we think of Trump as a wise man? That’s what I look for in leaders: people who have wisdom and not ego. I think wisdom should be a much, much higher virtue than ego.”
Certainly, Roach may have some insight into today’s political landscape that many of us aren’t privy to. The director’s last cinematic forays have been nothing but political. He adapted the book Game Change for HBO -- which was based on the true-life account of John McCain and Sarah Palin’s 2008 run -- and his latest film for the cable network, All the Way, features award-winning actor Bryan Cranston as former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson during his first year in office following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Roach also expands upon the similarities between Sarah Palin’s candidacy for Vice President and Donald Trump’s current run as the presumptive GOP nominee. “I think that Sarah Palin, in a way, paved the way for Trump,” Roach states. “I think that someone, [who] could be so popular and so unprepared for the office she sought and still somehow be taken seriously, gave license for someone like Trump.”
But how does Roach account for Trump’s popularity among conservative voters then? “The popularity of politicians is low, partly because of some bad behavior by politicians. But it’s very low...because there’s a 24-hour campaign -- a propaganda campaign -- to actually make government look like the problem, not the solution,” Roach clarifies. Using his latest film All The Way as an example, he expands upon this idea: “What this film I hope shows is that when people who believed in government could actually do good things. People who don’t believe in government are never going to fulfill anything...”
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