Michael Douglas slams Trump for creating 'drama,' 'chaos' in the world

Martha Ross, The Mercury News on Jun 13, 2025

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Michael Douglas is the latest Hollywood celebrity to denounce Donald Trump for deploying the National Guard and Marines to enforce immigration raids in Los Angeles, with the Oscar-winning actor saying the president has “created such drama” and is responsible for stoking conflict throughout the world.

Speaking on stage at the opening for the 71st Taormina Film Festival in Italy, the 80-year-old “Wall Street" icon actually apologized for U.S. domestic and international policies under Trump, saying he had never in his life seen so much conflict in the world, according to Vanity Fair.

“I was born at the end of World War II, but in my lifetime, this is the worst time that I can ever remember,” Douglas told the assembled Italian media, Vanity Fair reported. The “Basic Instinct” actor added: “I realize that my country bears a lot of the responsibility for the chaos that exists in the world. I apologize … to my friends, be it my neighbors in Canada or Mexico, or all the countries in the EU and NATO. I’m embarrassed and I apologize.”

Douglas and Trump happen to be contemporaries in American life and celebrity. Like Douglas, Trump was born after World War II and both men followed their powerful, successful fathers into their respective family businesses.

Douglas and Trump also notably crossed paths in 2010 when the president was a famously brash New York City real estate developer and reality TV star. That year, Trump also acted with Douglas in the film, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” Trump played himself in a cameo role, which was later deleted.

This film was a sequel to the classic 1987 film “Wall Street” and also starred Douglas as Gordon Gekko, a fictional New York City corporate raider arrested for insider trading. Douglas’ Gekko became a pop culture symbol of unrestrained greed in the 1980s, with his signature line, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Commenters have said that Gordon Gekko and “Wall Street” were a perfect statement about Trump’s idea of America, and the decade that buoyed his rise to power on the national stage.

After Douglas won an Academy Award for playing Gordon Gekko, he got to embody a much more noble character — an idealistic, effective and popular U.S. president — in the 1995 film “The American President.”

During Douglas’ interactions with the Italian media, he actually didn’t use Trump’s name much, according to Vanity Fair. He even said he was wary of giving Trump too much attention, but he still returned to critiquing his administration’s policies and actions.

When asked his biggest disappointment, Douglas said: “This last election in our country.”

Douglas also said that immigration “is a problem in every country,” Vanity Fair reported. But Douglas said Trump has “created such drama, that all these immigrants were murderers and rapists. This is before he got elected.”

Now that Trump is president again, Douglas denounced the way he’s been able to bypass Congress in an attempt to enact draconian immigration enforcement, according to Vanity Fair. “And my question to our government is, when or how do we stop this executive power?”

Douglas, a longtime California resident, also excoriated Trump for trying to punish California, because it is controlled by Democrats.

“The state of California is the fourth-largest GDP in the world,” Douglas said. “You have the United States, China, India — then the state of California. Bigger than Japan.”

Addressing ICE crackdowns in California, Douglas explained how San Joaquin Valley farms are a major contributor to the nation’s food supply. This agricultural industry also relies on the labor of seasonal workers who have come from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries and often stay on in the United States.

“There’s no possible reason that you should call out the National Guard” to deport these people, Douglas said. “To go into these middle-class neighborhoods— these are people who all have had jobs, been living in the country for 30 years or whatever. A very heavy-handed approach which isn’t resolving anything.”