‘A HUGE EMBARRASSMENT’

Michael Moore to Colbert: We Need to ‘Liberate’ America From the ‘Trump Virus’

The progressive filmmaker also called the coronavirus pandemic “minor league” compared to the coming climate crisis.

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” President Donald Trump tweeted over the weekend. As a “native Michigander,” Stephen Colbert asked Michael Moore Tuesday night, “What do you think he means by that? And do you feel liberated?”

“We’ve been planning our liberation for the last four years,” Moore answered with a laugh. “Sadly, Michigan voted for Trump. So it was a huge embarrassment.” He said that “liberation day” is already planned for Nov. 3, 2020, adding, “The party starts around 8 p.m. that night.”

“I hope so,” Colbert said in response.

Moore went on to say that he believes America is currently battling three viruses. The coronavirus is the “obvious one,” he explained, but there’s also the “Trump virus” that “needs to be eradicated, nonviolently and legally, at the polls.” And then there’s the “pre-Trump virus,” by which he essentially meant the broken political system that allowed someone like Trump to be elected president.

“I think a lot of people have been thinking about, like, how do we want to live after this pandemic?” Moore said hopefully. He added later, “I think we’re going to be a different people. We’re never going to think that anybody should have to work for $7.25 an hour. I think that’s gone.”

Colbert also asked Moore to weigh in on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has recently risen to the top of Joe Biden’s vice presidential shortlist. After singing Whitmer’s praises, Moore warned Biden off, “She can’t leave right now,” he said. “If we’ve learned anything from the leadership in D.C, we need leadership in Michigan and in all the states. The governors are the ones that are probably going to pull us out of this. And she can’t go anywhere.”

This week, Moore released a surprise documentary titled Planet of the Humans that takes on the climate crisis. And he used his appearance on The Late Show to draw a dramatic parallel between the current pandemic and the calamity on the horizon.

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Moore said the message of his new film is that people should treat the pandemic like a “coming attraction, a trailer given to us from mother nature” previewing what’s to come. “Look, nature’s given us this warning,” he said. “It’s putting us right now in our time-out room. And we should be using this time to think, when we come out of this, how we’re going to treat this planet, how we’re going to treat nature.”

Colbert agreed, saying he sees the parallels “because denialism exists in both of them.” He added, “The same people who deny that the coronavirus is actually a crisis, for so long leading up to the moment when it was undeniable, are the same people who are denying that the climate crisis exists.”

“This will look minor league compared to what the climate crisis and the other things are going to do to us in the future,” Moore concluded.

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