Edward Norton said that he thinks President Trump is stalling on conceding the election as a strategic maneuver in order to avoid legal jeopardy after leaving office.
The actor, who played a degenerate card cheat in the 1998 movie “Rounders” (also starring Matt Damon), compared the president’s strategy to playing poker in a message thread he posted to Twitter on Friday.
In the series of tweets, the actor, who said he grew up with a federal prosecutor for a dad, said that he does not think that Trump is attempting to lay the groundwork for launching his own television network or any of the other motives being ascribed to the president’s actions.
Instead, Norton theorized that the president knows he has lost, but he won’t concede because Trump, “knows he’s in deep, multi-dimensional legal jeopardy.” Norton further posited that Trump’s actions are merely “tactical delay” in order to “buy time for coverup and evidence suppression.”
Norton’s analysis did not specify what legal jeopardy he believes the president is in, or what crime he has committed that he would be covering up.
The actor called Trump’s actions “a desperate endgame, which is to create enough chaos and anxiety about a peaceful transfer of power, and fear of irreparable damage to the system, that he can cut a Nixon-style deal in exchange for finally conceding.”
Norton also compared the president’s strategy to playing a game of Texas Hold’em poker and said to call his bluff.
“We cannot let this mobster bully the USA into a deal to save his ass by threatening our democracy. THAT is his play. But he’s got junk in his hand. So call him,” Norton said.
The actor went on to say that the president is a, “whiny, sulky, petulant, Grinchy, vindictive little 10-ply-super-soft bitch who no doubt is just throwing a wicked pout fest and trying to give a tiny-hand middle finger to the whole country for pure spite, without a single thought for the dead & dying.”
He continued: “His contemptible, treasonous, seditious assault on the stability of our political compact isn’t about 2024, personal enrichment or anything else other than trying to use chaos and threat to the foundation of the system as leverage to trade for a safe exit. Call. His. Bluff.”
Norton said that faith in institutions is stretched, but they will hold: “He’s leaving, gracelessly and in infamy. But if we trade for it, give him some brokered settlement, we’ll be vulnerable to his return. We can’t flinch.”
As of this writing, the actor’s message has racked up more than 83,000 retweets and more than 395,000 likes on Twitter.
Norton’s IMDB credits include American History X, Rounders, Fight Club, The Score, The Italian Job, The Illusionist, The Incredible Hulk, and Motherless Brooklyn.
UNDERRATED MOVIE RECOMMENDATION:
“The Illusionist” is a compelling mystery about a magician and his lost love. It came out in 2006, two months before Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige.” Both movies feature similar premises about magicians with seemingly supernatural abilities near the end of the 19th century, so comparisons of the two films were inevitable, but the plots are sufficiently different that the comparison is not truly warranted. Nolan’s film got most of the praise when the movies came out, and understandably so – it is complex, layered, and meticulously structured. But “The Illusionist” is the more enjoyable story to watch, even if “The Prestige” is cinematically more impressive, and more of a thinker overall. Both, however, are great movies worth multiple viewings.
“The Illusionist” stars Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Paul Giamatti, and Rufus Sewell.
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