It’s the big question. And everybody, including myself, wants a pie graph. They want to be able to say what percentage is ideologue, what percentage is snake-oil salesman. And I’m not sure I can answer the question. We all know that being an effective salesman is coming to believe in what you’re selling. You know, I like to think that the human capacity for credulity is unlimited, unfettered. But the human capacity for self-deception — the ultimate self-credulity — is also unfettered, unlimited. I look at him and I think to myself: You can’t really believe this stuff. And yet, for all intents and purposes, he does.

Which stuff do you find it hardest to believe he believes?

I find it hardest to believe that he thinks that Donald Trump is an honest man. I find it hard to believe that he thinks that Donald Trump is enabling populist programs. How is this tax cut or the attempt to roll back capital gains taxes — how does that benefit the people? Is allowing all kinds of industrial pollution populism? I could go on and on.

I try making fun of him. You know, he was reading a book about tariffs and China and the Great Wall. And I said to him, “You know, the wall really worked in China.” He said, “How’s that?” I said, “No Mexicans.”

Did he laugh?

That time he didn’t. Once I told him I was in favor of the wall during our interview. And he said, “How’s that?” And I said, “Because I’m planning to leave this country, and the wall is the only thing that is going to keep those crazy American killers and rapists out of Mexico.”

I shouldn’t talk this way, but I have such underlying contempt for so much of this.

“Build the wall.” Do you really, really think that the wall is going to be a solution to unemployment for the middle class? Do you really, really, really think that’s the panacea for what ails us?

Did you — and I ask this sincerely because the verb has many meanings — enjoy your time with Bannon?

Yeah. I’m appalled by Bannon, but I like him.

Explain that paradox.

It gave me the opportunity to read a lot of stuff and watch a lot of stuff and think about a lot of stuff. I mean, I went to the set one day. Set decorators always have odds and ends that they keep in order to scatter around a set to make it look more realistic. Example: old books. And one of the old books was a copy of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” And I started reading it on set between takes. I finally said to him, “You know, I’ve been reading ‘Paradise Lost’ again. And that Lucifer character — he seems Bannon-esque.”