Weinstein ‘protected by the Democrats’
ACTRESS Rose McGowan yesterday accused US Democrats of protecting movie mogul Harvey Weinstein as she revealed she is planning to move to the UK.
The 44-year-old was one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of rape and told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the events of the past year had ‘almost snapped’ her.
Disgraced producer Weinstein has been accused by around 100 women of sexual harassment and assault and has been charged with rape and sexual assaults relating to three different women, but he denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.
Leading Democrats including Bill and Hillary Clinton were criticised for not moving quicker to condemn Weinstein when the scandal first broke, although they later did so. Miss McGowan, discussing her book Brave with a book festival audience, said: ‘I will say, Harvey Weinstein, his protection came from the Democratic Party, far more so than Hollywood.
‘He was their de facto cult leader and their star, and thanked as many times as god at the Oscars, a dead heat. But it was the Democratic Party and the operatives there.
‘He set up this whole operation to do this and he tended to go for anybody, the scale, the sheer magnitude, it’s probably in the thousands. He just f ***** with the wrong person.’
Miss McGowan, who starred in the 1996 horror movie Scream as well as the television series Charmed, helped bring down Weinstein and sparked the Me Too movement.
The actress, who grew up in the Children of God cult, also compared support for US President Donald Trump to a cult: ‘He’s their leader, he uses trigger words, he says the same things over and over.’
But she said Trump’s outspoken behaviour could help the feminist movement by highlighting and revealing inappropriate behaviour.
Asked about the direction of US politics, Miss McGowan said: ‘I am trying to move to the UK. But I do think Trump has done us a favour, if we can survive him, showing us so clearly what racism is, showing us so clearly what sexism is, and the thing is he’s doing what they all did before but he just says it.’