Mila Kunis Lashes Out Against Donald Trump’s Anti-Refugee Rhetoric
Image by Getty Images
By Maia Efrem July 6, 2016
In a new interview with Glamour magazine, Jewish actress Mila Kunis didn’t mince words while lashing out against Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican and anti-Syrian refugee rhetoric.
Kunis, 32, came to the defense of Muslim refugees, having gone through a similar experience when her family immigrated from the USSR when she was only seven years old.
“The whole Syrian-refugee thing — we came here on a religious-refugee visa, and I’m not going to blow this country up. I’m clearly paying taxes. I’m not taking anything away,” Kunis said, adding, “So the fact that people look at what’s happening and are like, ‘Pfft, they’re going to blow sh-t up’? It saddens me how much fear we’ve instilled in ourselves.”
When it comes to the GOP candidate’s wall at the U.S./Mexican border, “The 70s Show” star said she didn’t even have to answer that question. “There’s no point. It’s a really great sound bite.”
Adding, “And it got him far. Nobody should be mad at him; we did it to ourselves.”
Over the years, Kunis has openly discussed the anti-Semitism that forced her parents — her mother a physics teacher and her father, a mechanical engineer — to leave everything behind and move to the United States with only $250, the most money they were allowed to bring with them.
“I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008.
“I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn’t understand the culture. I didn’t understand the people. I didn’t understand the language. My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, ‘Imagine being blind and deaf at age seven.’ And that’s kind of what it felt like moving to the States.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
