Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Mila Kunis Lashes Out Against Donald Trump’s Anti-Refugee Rhetoric

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.”

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.