Bret Easton Ellis: Barbra Streisand, Lena Dunham Shouldn’t Blame Trump for Their Own ‘Neuroses’

Ellis says “childish meltdowns” by liberals are ruining his dinners out and even hurting his relationship with his boyfriend

Bret Easton Ellis is directing a Fullscreen original series
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Bret Easton Ellis says “childish meltdowns” by Hollywood liberals who still can’t accept Donald Trump’s win are ruining his dinners out with friends — and even hurting his relationship with his boyfriend.

In a 35-minute monologue on his latest podcast, the “American Psycho” author says coastal elites who embrace the anti-Trump “resistance” are testing his patience. He talked about a ruined night out at Spago’s, and another dinner spoiled by a millionaire who was furious about “patriarchy.” He also called out Lena Dunham, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep.

“You can dislike the fact that Trump was elected, yes, definitely, and yet still understand and accept ultimately that he was elected this time around. Or you can have a complete mental and emotional collapse and let the Trump presidency define you, which I think is absurd. … If you are still losing your s— about Trump, I think you should probably go to a shrink and not let the bad man that was elected define your self-victimization and your life. You are letting him win.”

“Barbra Streisand says she’s gaining weight because of Trump. Lena Dunham says she’s losing weight because of Trump. Really? You’re blaming the president for your own problems and neuroses?” Ellis said.

He also wondered why Meryl Streep used her Golden Globe speech in January to talk about Trump.

“Instead of talking about all the filmmakers she had worked with and who had passed away in the last two years — Michael Cimino, Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, or especially what it was like playing Carrie Fisher in ‘Postcards From the Edge,’ since Fisher had died just two weeks earlier, Streep used this moment to go on an anti-Trump rant for 10 minutes on national TV, instead of eulogizing her friend — again, reinstating the moral superiority of the left and ignoring aesthetics in place of ideology,” Ellis said.

He later added: “For some reason I started thinking about the cost of Meryl Streep’s gown at the Golden Globes and the $30 million apartment she had recently put on the market in Greenwich Village.”

Ellis said one of the “morally superior wealthy people” who ruined a recent dinner with friends by complaining about white male patriarchy lives in a penthouse on the Upper West Side — “and probably has a net worth of $10 million dollars.”

“Liberalism used to be about freedom but now is about a kind of warped moral authority that is actually part of the moral superiority movement. This faction of the left is touchingly now known as ‘The Resistance.’ Oh yes, the resistance. What is this resistance? There are posters all over my neighborhood in West Hollywood urging me to resist, resist, resist,” he said.

“But some of us, who did not vote for Trump, and who located exactly who he was decades ago … some of us have been wondering: Resist what, exactly? And who is telling us to resist whatever? The people who voted for the candidate who lost — I’m supposed to listen to them? Is this a joke? … Well I’m certainly resisting the childish meltdowns I’ve been witnessing at dinners and on social media and on late night TV and too many times in my own home.”

Ellis said his own boyfriend has relapsed into a struggle with opiates since Trump’s rise.

“What was happening to my boyfriend was also reflective of the epidemic of moral superiority that has engulfed and is now destroying, eating alive, the American left. I cannot count the time my boyfriend has left the house since the election his hair long and tousled, he hasn’t shaved in months, and he’s addicted to three things besides opiates: Russian conspiracies discussed on Reddit, Rachel Maddow detailing Russian conspiracies, and Final Fantasy 15,” Ellis said.

The author said he didn’t vote in the presidential election because his state, California, wasn’t in contention. But he stressed that he is no fan of the president, and that Trump was the hero of Patrick Bateman, the sociopathic antihero of “American Psycho.”

“A long time ago in a country far, far away I had made Trump Patrick Bateman’s hero in ‘American Psycho,’” Ellis said. “I had researched the odious business practices, the lying, Roy Cohn as his mentor, the hideous racism. Followed his trajectory. I had done my homework. You do not need to remind me. I know it all.”

Ellis also said Trump and his fellow disruptors are successfully “blowing up fixed ideas about what is presidential and what is not how campaigns should be run or not, how social media should be used to reach voters or not.”

“This is what leveled the press and made them look like some kind of old-school anachronism, unable to understand the new playbook that the disruptors had devised,” Ellis added. “Taking Trump literally was about as useful as complaining about the Kardashians. … The way the press the coverage of this election was an absolute moral disaster for our country.”

Ellis said he did have one dinner that wasn’t ruined recently — a night out in West Hollywood, where he was shocked to learn the entire table was voting for Trump. He said he tweeted about it, and was retweeted thousands of times, including by Trump himself.

“One of the women at that dinner texted me the next day and said she laughed when she saw the tweet. But she also warned: Don’t tell anyone who it is,” Ellis said. “Her business was Hollywood-based, and who knows what could happen in this climate? People were way too hysterical, and it’s just not worth it to defend your beliefs.”

He said the recent dust-ups over conservative sociologist Charles Murray appearing at Middleburg College — and liberal commentator Van Jones’ offering mild recent praise for Trump — show that liberals are going too far to stifle dissent.

“It’s time to get up, pull on your big-boy pants, and have a stiff drink at the bar,” Ellis said. “Because in the end, we share only one country.”

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