“Donald Trump Is the Charlie Sheen of Politics” Sheen’s Witty Response to Owen Wilson’s Comparison
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Charlie Sheen, a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, responded humorously when actor Owen Wilson compared him to the Republican leader in a 2017 Daily Beast interview titled “Donald Trump Is the Charlie Sheen of Politics.” Sheen took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to address Wilson’s comments, saying, “Dear O. Wilson they took your comment out of context! I’m honored! Thank you! If Trump will [have] me, I’d be his VP in a heartbeat!”
Wilson used the analogy to illustrate how Trump’s unfiltered remarks helped him dominate media coverage. “You can’t help but get a kick out of him, and I think part of it is we’re so used to politicians on both sides sounding like actors at press junkets – it’s sort of by rote, and they say all the right things,” Wilson remarked. “Here’s somebody who’s not following the script. It’s like when Charlie Sheen was doing that stuff – like, wow! He’s answering a question completely honestly and in an entertaining way. You sort of feel he could be a character from ‘Network.’”
Wilson elaborated on Trump’s showmanship, saying, “I don’t know if I’m not taking [Trump] as seriously as I should, but when he said he was going down to the border, and he showed up at a press conference and said, ‘Now I’m going out to the border, and I hope I’ll see you later’ — sort of suggesting that it was so dangerous that ‘who knows if I’ll see you later’…I don’t know, it was just funny to me. The guy is a showman. You have to sort of get a kick out of the guy. It is entertaining, for sure. That’s why people are tuning in.”
Prior to Wilson’s comments, Sheen had already criticized Trump in a series of now-deleted tweets. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sheen once tweeted, “Hey Trump, ‘A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home’ Abe Lincoln,” quoting the 16th President. Sheen added, “America please Wake Up! #AnyonebutTrump.” In July 2015, he tweeted, then deleted, “Trump you’re a sad and silly homunculus. Your words are as poignant as a sack of cat farts. You’re a shame pile of idiocy.”
Sheen’s disdain for Trump was further highlighted during a 2016 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, where he recounted a personal incident involving Trump. Sheen described a dinner with his ex-wife Brooke Mueller, where Trump offered him a gift. “He says, ‘I want to give you an early wedding gift as a gesture from me and Melania’…so he says ‘These are platinum diamond Harry Winston’ and he pulls off his cufflinks and he gives them to me”, as per The Washington Examiner.
Later, Sheen had the cufflinks appraised and discovered they were fake. “Smash cut to about six months later, I had some jewelry getting appraised at the house… She took the loop, spent about four seconds, and kind of recoiled from it — much like people do from Trump — and says, ‘In their finest moment, this is cheap pewter and bad zirconias.
