Sharon Stone had harsh words for her fellow Americans over the weekend as she reflected on Donald Trump’s election win.
Stone, a 66-year-old Pennsylvania native, ripped “80 percent” of Americans as being “uneducated” because they do not hold a passport—a number that’s off by about 40 percent—and declared that the country is in its “ignorant, arrogant adolescence.”
“We haven’t seen this before in our country,” Stone said of fascism. “So Americans who don’t travel, who 80 percent don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naïveté. What I would say is that the only way that we can help with these issues is to help each other.”
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The comments from the Basic Instinct star came after she was asked about violence against women during a news conference at the Torino Film Festival in Italy, where she was given the Stella della Mole lifetime achievement award.
Stone made a veiled reference to Trump in her response and some conservative influencers have accused her of comparing the U.S. president-elect to Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist former dictator
“You know, Italy has seen fascism,” Stone said. “Italy has seen these things. You guys—you understand what happens. You have seen this before [and we have not].”
Stone, who was nominated for an Oscar for her Casino performance in 1995, went on to speak about the importance of good men helping protect women from those who abuse them.
“Now, we can’t just say women should help women because that’s the only way we have survived so far,” Stone said. “We must say that good men must help good men and those good men must be very aware that a lot of their friends are not good men.”
“And we can’t continue to pretend that your friends are good men when they’re not good men,” she continued. “And you must be very clear minded and understand that your friends who are not not good men are dangerous violent men. And you have to keep them away from your daughters, your wives and your girlfriends, because this is the time when we can no longer look away, when bad men are bad.”
Trump’s cabinet picks have an eye-popping number of sexual assault allegations against them. Perhaps the appointee with the longest list of allegations was Matt Gaetz, who called off his bid to be Trump’s attorney general last week because of the “distraction” his sex scandals were causing Trump’s transition team.
MAGA influencers had seized on Stone’s veiled comments about Trump by Tuesday.
Riley Gaines, who used her defiance to competing against a transgender swimmer to vault her into a right-wing influencer, was among those piling on Stone.
“These out-of-touch Hollywood elitists calling American voters uneducated is peak hypocrisy,” said the 24-year-old Gaines. “They lecture from their ivory towers while being completely disconnected from the everyday realities most Americans face.”
Stone has been outspoken against Trump in the past. This summer, she said she was considering a move to Europe because of Trump’s growing popularity stateside and his platform of “hate.”
“I have always been a very proud American, and I love my country very much,” she said in July, Deadline reported. “Of course, I am deeply concerned with what’s happening in my country now. This is one of the first times in my life that I’ve actually seen anyone running for office on a platform of hate and oppression.”
“I would like to believe that my country has all of the qualities that we have always stood for—independence, courage, dignity—and that all of the other countries that we have stood for will stand by us as we go through this concerning time,” Stone added. But it seems she now believes the re-election of Donald Trump has proven her wrong.
