Actor Josh Brolin says President Trump was a “different guy” when he first met him in 2009, and that “there is no greater genius than [Trump] in marketing”.
Brolin was speaking to the Independent to promote his new film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and said that while his clergyman character was not based on the president, there was a similarity in that once he “garners a sense of power, then there are no boundaries”.
Brolin said that he was “not scared” of Trump, adding: “Because even though he says he’s staying for ever, it’s just not going to happen. And if it does, then I’ll deal with that moment. But having been a friend of Trump before he was president, I know a different guy.”
Brolin met Trump while making the Oliver Stone film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, in which Brolin played stock trader Bretton James. Trump spent a day on set filming a cameo, which ultimately did not make the final cut.
Saying Trump now has “power unmitigated, it’s unregulated”, Brolin added: “There is no greater genius than him in marketing – he takes the weakness of the general population and fills it.
“And that’s why I think a lot of people feel that they have a mascot in him. I think it’s much less about Trump than it is about the general population and their need for validation.”
