Jon Voight continues criticism of Obama, Democrats

By Melissa Arseniuk

Monday, June 15, 2009 | 7:36 a.m.

Jon Voight may have come to CineVegas Sunday night to accept an award, but that didn’t stop the outspoken actor from sharing some of his partisan political views on the red carpet.

“Right now we’re in a real bad mess,” Voight said when asked about the current state nation’s politics.

“So many things are changing, we don’t realize that we’re losing ground almost every day,” he said.

It’s no secret that the actor is no fan of the President.

“Obama is a person that’s influenced by Marxists,” Voight said. “We’re going to have to pay very close attention (to him).”

“I feel that all of his recommendations have been disastrous to us,” he said.

The opinionated actor’s comments echoed the ones he made last week while making a speech at a Republican fundraiser in Washington, D.C.

“Everything Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous,” he said during his June 8 address.

The Academy Award winner, who is the father of actress Angelina Jolie, also called Obama a “false prophet” during the speech and suggested, "Obama really thinks he is a soft-spoken Julius Caesar.”

“He think he's going to conquer the world with his soft-spoken sweet talk,” he said.

Voight spread his criticisms across the upper echelons of the Democratic party Sunday night before the CineVegas Honorees Reception at Rain nightclub at the Palms.

“I’m upset with these guys, they’re thinking of themselves,” he said of the country’s leading Democrats. “Much of this budget is campaigning to get more votes, to keep them in office forever. They’re doing a campaign that’s about their own continuance instead of about the country’s needs.”

“I feel they’ve done an injustice to the country, the way they’ve behaved over the past several years,” he said.

Voight doesn’t have much hope of seeing the kind of change he’s hoping for while Obama is in the Oval Office, Nancy Pelosi heads the House of Representatives, and Nevada’s own Sen. Harry Reid is the Senate Majority Leader.

“Maybe (Obama) will wake up, maybe his team will wake up, but we’ve got people like Nancy Pelosi, (and) Harry Reid from Nevada who have really done us in,” he said.

The 71-year-old star said he’d like the Democrats to “stop right where they are now and turn around and do everything the reverse.”

He thinks the Democrats need a little reverse psychology.

“If they say this, I would say, well, then do that,” he said.

“The country is being eroded,” he said.

Voight concluded his political remarks on the red carpet by urging his fellow Americans to “stop this erosion, be attentive, be a good citizen, be active.”

Jon Voight received the CineVegas Marquee Award for artistic excellence, professional accomplishment and dedication to cinema Sunday night.

Melissa Arseniuk writes about Las Vegas entertainment and celebrity events. She can be reached at 702-948-7823 or by e-mail at [email protected].