The Russian state media are not happy with actor Morgan Freeman’s recent comments calling for an investigation into Russia’s involvement in the United States’ November 2016 presidential election.
“We have been attacked. We are at war,” Freeman says in the video. “We need our president to speak directly to us and tell us the truth.”
He asks the viewer to imagine a movie script in which a former KGB spy works his way into his government and becomes president.
“He establishes an authoritarian regime, then he sets his sights on his sworn enemy, the United States,” he narrates. “And like the true KGB spy he is, he secretly uses cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world. Using social media to spread propaganda and false information, he convinces people in democratic societies to distrust their media, their political processes, and even their neighbors.”
This is no movie script, he warns, this is the story of Russian president Vladmir Putin.
Practically every state-controlled media in Russia lashed out against Freeman for the video. A Russian film director on a news program said, “I think, the grandpa just got drunk.”
Another media outlet, Channel Five, said Freeman “lost millions of Russian fans in a moment” as he became an “American propaganda mouthpiece.”
Network Rossiya 24 even brought in a panel of psychiatrists to explain what could have possessed the world-famous actor to level such accusations at Putin.
One of the Russian psychiatrists postulated that Freeman must have developed “a Messianic complex” from acting in movies as the President of the United States as well as literally playing God in others, presumably referring to the divine comedies Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. One of the network’s anchors said the comments were probably due to an “excessive workload” and “marijuana use.”
Freeman is in fact a strong advocate for the legalization of marijuana. Besides being a medical treatment for many ailments, including his own fibromyalgia, the actor also believes it’s harmless fun.
“My first wife got me into it many years ago,” he said. “How do I take it? However it comes! I’ll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it! This movement is really a long time coming, and it’s getting legs—longer legs.”