Denis Leary is fired up. In the halcyon MTV days it was his default setting, whether playing a hell-raising Keith Richards on Remote Control or unleashing a series of motormouthed rants to the camera in a turtleneck and duster, but since then he’s mellowed out, quit chain-smoking, and settled into life as an off-screen father and on-screen TV showrunner/star—first on the acclaimed FX drama Rescue Me and now as an aging rocker in Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll. But the topic of one Donald Trump has him reverting back to his trademark persona.
You see, in addition to his comedy and television bona fides, Leary is also a prolific philanthropist. His charities the Leary Firefighters Foundation and the Fund for New York’s Bravest have distributed millions of dollars to fire departments in his native Boston and the Big Apple, as well as to the families of the 343 brave firemen who perished on 9/11.
During the Republican presidential primary, Trump invoked the September 11th tragedy on several occasions to gain political points, first claiming he saw “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center that fateful day (there is no evidence to support this), and then alleging he somehow personally witnessed “people jump” out of the buildings from the confines of his penthouse apartment in Midtown Manhattan, over four miles from Ground Zero. Trump did all this despite referring to the Twin Towers as “not great” buildings a week after the 9/11 attacks, making zero donations to 9/11 charities as of 2015, and visiting the 9/11 Memorial for the very first time to curry favor on the eve of the New York presidential primary, four and a half years after it was erected.
“I think he’ll basically do anything to get the spotlight,” offers a frustrated Leary. “Trump will take advantage of whatever the situation, the cause, or the event might be. Where was he before this? I’ve been downtown forever and been to a lot of 9/11 Memorial events—the fifth anniversary, the 10th anniversary, others—and I don’t remember seeing Donald Trump there once.”
“It’s all built on fear, noise, bigotry, and finger-pointing,” he continues of Trump. “The guy loves to tweet. But I look at all the candidates on both sides, and I’m thinking, ‘These are the people we have to choose from? What the fuck is going on?’” Cont.
Story from - The Daily Beast
Image from - Gage Skidmore - Flickr
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