Tim Robbins on Trump: "The Problem Is Bigger Than Just One Man"

The country's "system of politics and media" needs fixing, the actor and director tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Tim Robbins has become the latest Hollywood figure to criticize President Donald Trump.

Addressing domestic political issues while at the Karlovy Vary film festival in the Czech Republic, the actor and the director dubbed Donald Trump a "monster," but said "the problem is bigger than just one man."

Robbins, who received the festival's Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at its opening Friday, slammed the president for separating migrant children from their parents in a public address that took many by surprise.

Returning to his comments later, Robbins told The Hollywood Reporter that he didn't think that "getting [Trump] out of office" would "solve the problem" in U.S domestic politics.

"The problem is bigger than just one man," he said. "I think this is a problem that is manifesting because of 30 or 40 years of strategy and propaganda that have paved the road for Mr. Trump to be president. I don't think getting him out of office is gong to solve the problem. The problem is deeply engrained in our system of politics and media."

Robbins suggested that he had long been concerned with issues of freedom and equity in America, telling THR that media deregulation dating back to the days of Ronald Reagan's presidency in the early 1980s — when requirements for balanced and fair reporting of political issues were scrapped — laid the grounds for the undermining of anti-monopoly restrictions under President Bill Clinton.

"We used to have a thing called the 'fairness doctrine,' where to be granted a broadcast license, you had a civic responsibility that if you presented one point of view, you had to show the other," said Robbins. "Under Clinton, multibillionaires were allowed to buy up TV and radio and put out what they wanted.There was a political agenda that had everything to do with a shrinking minority of conservatives who needed to figure out a way of staying in power. And they have done that."

According to Robbins, current U.S. politics misrepresent what most ordinary Americans want. "We are a way more progressive people. Most people want better wages, child care and health care," he said. "The Republican strategy was to make sure that never happened and Trump just represents that."

The responsibility of filmmakers and artists, Robbins believes, is not necessarily to oppose Trump, but to "tell stories that resonate with truth, that tell stories that are not normally told, [and] to present the human side of this thing we are all struggling through."

Robbins added: "I don't think [conservatives] would spend so much energy and time trying to marginalize artists if artists did not have tremendous power."

Talking about his own artistic ambitions, Robbins — who has not directed a movie since Cradle Will Rock in 1999 — said he was "optimistic" that within the next couple of years he would put together the financing for an original script he wrote a few years ago called The Heretic.

"It is a film about fate and hypocrisy, about three men who have either been mistaken for or think they are the second coming of Christ," Robbins said. "It is about hypocrisy, faith and the difference between the work and actions of Jesus Christ and the appropriation of Christ for political ends."