LOS ANGELES — In the past two years, Jim Carrey has become as known for his anti-Donald Trump artwork as his acting chops. And he seems OK with that.
“Social media is a canvas for me,” Carrey said at Vulture Festival in Los Angeles on Sunday during a Q&A with art critic Jerry Saltz. “And I think if it’s used in that way to express the truth or whatever in an artistic way, it’s a beautiful thing.”
The award-winning actor has turned to Twitter amid the Trump presidency to showcase his fiery political cartoons — featuring the president and his “minions,” as Carrey labels them.
Carrey said when he first started using Twitter in a more political way, people tried to dissuade him. “There was a lot of pressure on me from my management, from people in charge [who] go, ‘Don’t mess this up,’” he said.
He recalled them saying if “you start talking about politics, you’re going to lose half your audience.” Carrey’s reaction? “I say, ‘Lose ’em.’”
It seems that a lot of his fans don’t mind the political activism, as Carrey still has a whopping 18.1 million followers on the platform ― and lines of people waiting to get into the sold-out Vulture Festival panel.
Much of the panel involved Carrey breaking down the inspiration behind his cartoons.
“Trump is a melanoma and anybody who covers for him, including Sarah Sanders, is putting makeup on it,” Carrey said. “These people have to be removed from our system because they are bad for us.”
Some of “these people” Carrey referred to, and features in his pieces, include: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom Carrey described as a “poison in our system that we have to purge,” and Vice President Mike Pence, who Carrey said has a face that “is the face of absolute insincerity.”
But it’s not all critical art.
Carrey recently highlighted Beto O’Rourke. “A star was born,” he wrote in a tweet accompanying a sketch of the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, who lost his bid to unseat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas.
During the panel, he said he “would love to see Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris” as a Democratic presidential ticket in 2020.
“I think she’s fantastic, and he’s a really incredible guy.”