Alan Cumming: Trump Allows People To Espouse Views They'd Otherwise Be 'Ashamed' To Have

People are "desperately grabbing on for something to be angry at and to persecute."
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Actor Alan Cumming has publicly addressed his support for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and he told The Huffington Post earlier this week that Donald Trump is giving people who’d otherwise be too “ashamed” to speak a platform.

“The Good Wife” actor explained to host Alex Berg that there’s been a “really interesting” shift over the last 20 years in the U.S., with previously marginalized groups of people gaining visibility and equality. It’s left others so “furious” with the changing status quo that they’re “desperately grabbing on for something to be angry at and to persecute,” he said. 

“A lot of the racism that we are witnessing right now is due to the fact that people, a certain part of the population, have been furious that we’ve had a black president for the last eight years,” Cumming said. “And it’s only now coming out because someone — Donald Trump — is giving them a voice and giving them a chance to express opinions that otherwise they would have been ashamed to harbor, and I think they should be ashamed.”

Cumming said the “real fail” this election has been the media outlets who’ve let Trump espouse lies without question. 

“I just felt like he just stands there and says lies, blatant lies, and nobody says, ‘No that’s not true,’” Cumming said. “There’s no fact-checking. It just seems to be reporting rather than analyzing and taking to task and it’s all our responsibility but especially the media who are supposed to be giving a fair and balanced view.”

Cumming is out with a new memoir called, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures.

Hear more from Cumming in the video above and watch the full conversation below. 

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularlyincitespolitical violence and is a

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