Stephen King, the author behind best-selling horror books like "The Shining" and "It," said this week that he believes President Trump Donald John TrumpIn 1710 the Brits impeached an orange-haired populist — It did not go well Philadelphia mayor posts photo of Rapinoe atop City Hall: 'Equal pay now!' Social media summit highlights partisan approaches on tech MORE’s administration is scarier than one of his own novels.
King, who sat down with NowThisNews, was asked if the current commander in chief is scarier than his fictional tales.
“Short answer to that is yes, I do. I do think it’s scarier,” King said in the clip posted Friday.
Author @StephenKing predicted the rise of Trump 40 years ago — but he says the reality is scarier than anything he’s written pic.twitter.com/eVaza9TRgj — NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 12, 2019
The novelist also suggested that he predicted Trump’s rise to power more than four decades ago in his 1979 book “The Dead Zone.”
“I was sort of convinced that it was possible that a politician would arise who was so outside the mainstream and so willing to say anything that he would capture the imaginations of the American people,” King said.
One of the central characters in “The Dead Zone” is a ruthless businessman-turned-politician named Greg Stillson.
King said the candidate was known for “crazy stuff that nobody would possibly believe or so we thought, until Donald Trump came along.”
The media doubts Stillson’s campaign in the novel, but soon violence breaks out at one of his big rallies.
“When Greg Stillson actually gains a following, he has a cadre of bikers who support him,” King said. “And they’re at the rallies and they make sure nobody heckles Greg Stillson.”
Trump was accused of inciting violence this past March when he said things could get “very bad” if his supporters in the police, military and biker groups got “tough.”
During a rally for then-Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley Joshua (Josh) David HawleySocial media summit highlights partisan approaches on tech Hillicon Valley: FTC reportedly settles with Facebook for B fine | Trump calls to regulate Facebook's crypto project | Court rules Pentagon can award B 'war cloud' contract | Study shows automation will hit rural areas hardest FTC settles with Facebook for billion fine: report MORE (R) in September, Trump said that his opponents "were lucky that we’re peaceful," The Washington Post noted in a post on his more recent comments.
"Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump ... they travel all over the country. ... They’ve been great," Trump said at the time. "But these are tough people ... but they’re peaceful people, and antifa and all — they’d better hope they stay that way."
“My worry at the time that I wrote ‘The Dead Zone’ was that somebody like Greg Stillson might actually get elected and rise through the ranks, become president of the United States and start World War III,” King said.
King went on to call Stillson a "boogeyman" of his whom he never wanted to see "on the American political scene."
"But we do seem to have a Greg Stillson as president of the United States," he said.
“I know that American voters have always had real attraction to outsiders with the same kind of right-wing America-first policy,” King added. “And if that reminds people of Trump, I can’t be sorry because it was a character that I wrote."
King, a frequent Trump critic, often mocks the commander in chief on Twitter, writing late last year that Trump's own Twitter use provides “a window into an increasingly disordered mind.”
The suspense novelist has also said Trump is “unfit” to serve as president and called for him to be removed from office.
BrainstormsBriefcase on July 13rd, 2019 at 12:10 UTC »
There’s a part in his novel The Stand where he simply describes the breakdown of society and it’s the scariest thing he’s ever written. People turn on each other, branches of the military go rogue, white supremacists and black power advocates enter all-out war, and lots of innocent people die, and the scariest part is that it’s all so possible.
It’s hard not to read that section and think of Trump supporters, detention camps, right-wing militants and wonder if we’re not partway there.
trastamaravi on July 13rd, 2019 at 11:45 UTC »
Trump is scary, but he’s indicative of a larger trend in the Republican Party towards the extreme right. Even if we beat Trump in 2020, we can’t just sit back and think our job is done. If we think Trump is our only problem, then the next Trump will just be that much worse.
kgunnar on July 13rd, 2019 at 11:13 UTC »
I have frequently thought about Trump in comparison to the character of Greg Stillson. In the novel, Stillson’s political career is ended when he uses a kid as a human shield to protect himself at one of his rallies. I have to wonder if Trump could do this and actually get away with it after Fox News rationalizes his actions.