John Waters on the Trump Administration: “Pence Is the One I’m Really Worried About”

"Trump at least has met a gay person."
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Have you ever wondered what it takes to shock John Waters, the man behind cult classics like Cry-Baby, Hairspray and A Dirty Shame? So has Stephen Colbert. The late night host asked him what it would take to warrant such a reaction from him and Waters’ answer was … not that surprising. “Well, the election shocked me, certainly,” he answered. There are many of us who weren’t expecting the outcome of a Donald Trump win.

Still, it happened and there are plenty of young individuals—minorities, women and members of the LGBTQIA community (essentially people who don’t fall into the cishet white male category)—who are fearful of Trump out of concern for a number of things including access to medical care and hormones or having their marriage voided. But for Waters, it’s Pence who you really need to watch out for.

“I lived through Nixon, I lived through Reagan who said there wasn’t anything to AIDS…so we can deal with him,” he said. “Trump at least has met a gay person, but Pence is the one I’m really worried about. To me, the whole thing about Pence is his policies are so terrible. With gay people, he wanted to not have AIDS funding and give it to conversion therapy. Well, even Pence wouldn’t want me to be straight. I mean, would I be doing the Electric Slide and ogling Tiffany Trump? It’s hard to imagine.”

Waters went on to discuss Pence’s appearance at a showing for the hit Broadway musical, Hamilton, in which members of the audience booed him. “I think he deserved what he got at Hamilton, to be honest. First of all, Hamilton is the only musical that heterosexual men ever loved, and I really liked it too. But he better be careful if he goes back to Broadway, like I hope he doesn’t go the revival of Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! because those chorus girls will come out and give him a new kind of [insert your own colorful word here].”

Well, he does have a point.

(via Indiewire, image via screencap)

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