Kal Penn on White House Response to Arts Council Resignations: ‘We Broke Up With Him First’
Actor Kal Penn was one of the members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities… until today, when he and the other members sent a letter of resignation to President Trump. He appeared with Joy Reid on MSNBC tonight to not only explain this decision, but respond to the White House’s statement on it:
NEW: White House responds to @kalpenn and others resigning the arts commission, says Trump was going to disband it anyway: pic.twitter.com/9Xi2mzN7av
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) August 18, 2017
As he similarly expressed on Twitter, Penn said, “Unfortunately, we broke up with him first. So he’s not allowed to break up with us after that. I learned that in fourth grade.”
He told Reid that a lot of people on the board was disturbed by the events of this week and didn’t “want to be complicit”:
“We just sort of looked at ourselves and said this has gone far beyond––you’ve got a sitting president who… is equating a terrorist with the ‘other side.’ We sort of said, ‘Look, we’ve got this incredible arts program called Turnaround Arts that was launched through the president’s committee… What do we tell our kids when they ask us, is this normal?’ And we just sort of said we can’t stand around and have our names attached to something like this. And so, for us, that certainly was the right decision.”
He also weighed in on arts funding in general under the Trump administration, saying that people like Ivanka Trump can talk about its importance all they want, but it’s the budget numbers that speak volumes about White House priorities.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
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