Actor John Cusack on Thursday slammed President Obama, saying his security policies were “worse” than those of former President George W. Bush.
“His domestic policy is a bit different, but when you talk about drones, the American empire, the NSA, civil liberties, attacks on journalism and whistleblowers, he’s as bad or worse than Bush,” Cusack told The Daily Beast in an interview.
“He hasn’t started as many wars, but he’s extended the ones we had, and I don’t even think Dick Cheney or Richard Nixon would say the president has the right to unilaterally decide whom he can kill around the world,” he added.
{mosads}Cusack was responding to a CNN/ORC poll released on Wednesday that found Americans viewed former Bush more favorably than Obama.
The “High Fidelity” star said the two leaders were more alike than different on foreign policy.
“Well, Obama has certainly extended and hardened the cement on a lot of Bush’s post-9/11 Terror, Inc. policies, so he’s very similar to Bush in every way that way,” Cusack said.
He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had inspired abuse of executive power during both Obama and George W. Bush’s presidencies.
“On Tuesdays, the president can just decide whom he wants to kill, and you know, since 9/11 there are magic words like ‘terror,’ and if you use magic words, you can justify any power grab you want,” the “Con Air” actor said.
Cusack also dismissed calls from fellow celebrity Vince Vaughn to make guns more accessible.
“That’s not the kind of debate where you want to do a tit-for-tat with what two celebrities think about it, and in order to talk about it you have to do it in an in-depth way — you have need to follow the money and see what the politics are,” Cusack said, citing recent gun violence in Baltimore and Chicago.
“But no, I think that’s a bad idea,” he added of Vaughn’s proposal.
Vaughn argued on Monday that he supports people “having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home.”
“You think that the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to?” he asked. “They do. And we should be allowed the same rights.”
“Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat,” said Vaughn, who is starring in the new season of “True Detective.”
“Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won’t rid the world of criminality,” he said.