Obama's 'broken up with me': Matt Damon says president he once lionized has 'lots of explaining to do' over his stance on national security and education

Damon told BET that Obama's drone strikes and NSA gave him pause, 'especially for a constitutional law professor'

The 'Elysium' star campaigned aggressively for Obama in 2008

Now says one of his friends decided 'Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician'

Also taking flak for advocating for public education while sending his own kids to private schools



Matt Damon no longer has a crush on Barack Obama. 'He broke up with me,' the movie star said in an interview published online Thursday.

The star of the upcoming film 'Elysium' told BET that he and the president 'no longer see eye-to-eye.'

'There are a lot of things that I really question, he said, specifically about the Obama administration's national security posture.

'The legality of the drone strikes,' Damon said, 'and these NSA revelations are – like, you know – Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.'

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In August 2011, Damon told reporters that he was 'really dissatisfied' with Obama 'doubling down' on George W. Bush's 'bad ideas' for education

What a difference four years can make: Damon campaigned aggressively for Obama in 2008

Obama has come under fire for presiding over an NSA with a mandate for domestic spying. The agency's biggest secrets are now exposed publicly since contractor Edward Snowden leaked them to the press and fled to Russia.

And the president has faced growing outrage from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and other libertarian-minded Republicans, following his Department of Justice's longtime refusal to guarantee that it won't use drones to surveil Americans – an assurance it gave only in the face of an embarrassing Senate filibuster .

The White House continues to use unmanned drones as first-strike weapons against terrorism targets overseas.



Damon campaigned aggressively for then-Senator Obama during the 2008 election season. Nine days before the 2008 election, Damon told a room full of volunteers in Florida that they should work hard to ‘make sure Barack wins’

But in the president's second term, the bloom is clearly off the rose.

In Elysium, a crew of gun-toting officers secures the line between the Occupy-inspired 1 per cent and the rest of humanity

Damon told reporters in August 2011 that he was 'really dissatisfied' with Obama 'doubling down' on George W. Bush's 'bad ideas' for education.

Three months later in an interview with Elle magazine he said, 'I've talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, "Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician."'



'You know,' he added, 'a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.'

Damon's criticism of Obama began in late 2010, and by April 2011 the president was ready to fire back, albeit in good fun.

'It's fair to say that when it comes to my presidency, the honeymoon is over,' he at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

' Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau so right back atcha buddy.'

Nine days before the 2008 presidential election, Damon visited an Obama volunteer center in South Florida, urging dozens of students to 'make sure Barack wins'

Damon has come under fire this week following revelations that despite his long-term advocacy for improving public education, he sends his own children to a private school.

'II pay for a private education and I’m trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had,' he told The Guardian , 'but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It’s unfair.'

During a 2011 rally in Washington D.C. , Damon told a crowd of teachers that he would not trade his own public school education 'for anything.'

His film 'Elysium' which opens Friday, has been panned by conservatives for arguing for a socialist utopia as an alternative to a future world of haves and have-nots.

The Occupy Wall Street-inspired plot line involves a wealthy elite class that has abandoned an overcrowded Earth for a luxury space station, leaving the rest of humanity in crime-ridden and poverty-stricken squalor.