Adam McKay Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Oscar-winning director and producer Adam McKay has unloaded on the Democratic Party, with whom he split from after the 2024 Presidential election.
“We are being hit with the high-grade marketing and no group is worse than white liberals. I mean, they are the worst. I’ve tried to talk to them about the climate. They are so smug and captured. And it boils down to privilege. I mean, when you talk to white moneyed liberals, they’re getting a lot from this broken system,” McKay told the Urgent Futures podcast hosted by Jesse Damiani during a May 13 episode.
Related Stories
Movies 'Thrash' Review: Phoebe Dynevor Gives Birth in Floodwaters Teeming With Sharks in Preposterous but Enjoyable Netflix Pulp
Movies 'Together' Filmmaker Michael Shanks Teams with Adam McKay for Mystery Sci-Fi Comedy (Exclusive)
“It’s incredible to watch people this far down the road still saying, ‘You gotta stand by the Democratic Party.’ The same party that wouldn’t convict Trump of a crime after he told a crowd, ‘Go to the Capitol’ [and] the same party where the previous presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, literally funded Trump’s campaign,” he argued.
McKay, who has become a climate change campaigner in recent years, also took aim at former U.S. President Joe Biden failing to declare a climate emergency while still in office.
“I’ve tried to talk to them about the climate. They are so smug and captured and it really boils down to privilege. When you talk to white moneyed liberals, they’re getting a lot from this broken system. At some point, I realized these are bad faith arguments and conversations,” McKay told the podcast.
He insisted there was little diference between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington D.C. “Once you kind of flip that switch and realize white liberals are full on right wingers and the Republicans are extreme right wingers, by any international definition of right/left wing, you can’t support a party that doesn’t want universal health care. The Democrats don’t have that in their party platform. Kamala Harris never brought it up,” McKay argued.
For anyone looking to still make headway with the Democratic Party on progressive issues and campaigns, he added: “Best of luck to you, because you’re not gonna argue with them. They’re coming from a place of they don’t care. They have privilege. They’re trying to stay in their class, social scene. They’re more worried about their alumnae cocktail hour and not stepping out of place.”
McKay also told the podcast: “The level of damage those creeps have done to our country, white liberals don’t even want to hear about it, because it’s inconvenient and unpleasant. So yeah, I almost can say I despise American white liberals. They are the grossest of the gross.”
After insisting mainstream media outlets like MS Now and CNN and the New York Times and the Washington Post on the newspaper front had been “totally captured by Big Capital,” McKay talked about a noir series he’s working on that is based on Miami Herald journalist Julie K Brown’s work to probe Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender and disgraced financier.
“God bless the Miami Herald with Julie K Brown,” he declared. Having written a pilot episode of the noir series for Sony Pictures TV tentatively titled No One to Tell, the three season project will center on a former “hot shot” investigative journalist who goes from gig to gig and faces an uphill fight to gain a wide audience.
“If you look at the genres from the past 100 years, film noir is holding up pretty well. A complicated morally gray world, with a cynical anti-hero who’s going to get destroyed by the one thing he actually cares about. Oh my God, that’s a pretty good description of 2026 America,” McKay said.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
