Hollywood star Richard Gere called President Trump a “bully” and a “thug” in his acceptance speech at the Spanish Academy’s Goya Awards on Saturday night.
While accepting his honorary lifetime achievement award, Gere warned of the “slippery slope” toward authoritarianism in the U.S. and elsewhere and urged the public to be vigilant.
“I’m coming from a place now that we are in a very dark place in America, where we have a bully and a thug who is the president of the United States,” Gere said in his speech, stopping when the crowd began to applaud.
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“But it’s not just in the U.S.,” he continued. “It’s everywhere. Everywhere.”
Gere said he read a letter in the New York Times from someone in Hungary who described “a slippery slope of how this happens everywhere.”
“Authoritarianism takes us all over,” Gere continued. “We have to be vigilant, we have to be alert, we have to be energetic. We have to be brave. We have to be courageous.”
“And everyone who’s watching this in the Spanish-speaking world and elsewhere, we have to be willing to stand up, tell the truth, be honest, and that there’s a there’s a place in all of our lives for basic kindness, for basic love and understanding and an embrace of each other,” he continued.
