Mark Hamill likens Trump to monster from John Carpenter's 'The Thing': 'His lack of empathy is remarkable'
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill on April 9 slammed President Donald Trump's response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic by pointing out the Republican's incessant need to paise himself in the crisis.
The legendary actor criticized the president for not offering his sympathies to the ones suffering or dead because of the deadly virus, suggesting that Trump was a monster straight out of a horror movie.
"Perpetually obsessed with ratings & praise for himself, but still not a word of sympathy for the suffering or those who died," Hamill wrote on Twitter. "The lack of empathy is remarkable."
Hamill also posted a poster of the 1982 John Carpenter horror classic “The Thing,” comparing Trump to the monster in the movie, which can shift form and mimic humans. However, for Hamill, the monster in the film imitated human behavior better than the president.
"The Thing imitates human behavior far more convincingly than he does," the actor said while adding a hashtag #Biden2020, suggesting that he would be voting for former Vice President and the likely 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The icon's statement came shortly after Trump boasted about the television viewership of his news conferences linked to the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 16,600 lives in the United States alone.
The president, in one of this tweets had responded to a highly critical editorial by The Wall Street Journal, by tweeting: "The Wall Street Journal always 'forgets' to mention that the ratings for the White House Press Briefings are 'through the roof' (Monday Night Football, Bachelor Finale, according to @nytimes) & is only way for me to escape the Fake News & get my views across. WSJ is Fake News!"
Trump has bragged about his television ratings during the coronavirus crisis before too while repeatedly praising his own performance. Mediaite, earlier this week, reportedly documented at least 116 examples of the Republican's self-congratulatory rhetoric during the crisis.
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Coronavirus has claimed more than 16,600 lives in the United States within weeks, while the total number of infections in the country has risen above 466,299, according to the Johns Hopkins University live-tracking dashboard. The US has been branded the worst affected country in the world amid the pandemic with the most number of infections and a rapidly-rising death toll.
Trump, amid this crisis, has been severely criticized for his response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Republican, last month, had suggested easing federal guidelines on social distancing in an attempt to keep the country's economy running. He backed down after advice from leading immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci, who is assisting the federal coronavirus task force.
However, it appears that Trump is considering lifting the lockdown across the country soon, arguing that the nation cannot be "destroyed" and "we have to get back to work." "We have to get back to work. We don't want to be doing this for months and months and months," Trump said during his daily press briefing on April 4. The president had said reopening will be a "big decision". He has previously argued that the "cure cannot be worse than the problem."