Larry Flynt Talks Trump, Sessions With The Hollywood Reporter

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—The second day of confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has concluded, and some senators are still waiting for the nominee to supply the text of racially-tinged speeches he gave several years ago, not to mention some of his correspondence from the days when he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of (still largely segregationist) Alabama, and later the state's Attorney General, as well as many other requested documents—and it probably didn't help that The Washington Post managed to unearth a 1986 letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King's widow Coretta Scott King opposing the racist Sessions' bid to become a federal judge—a letter that had been hidden in the files of fellow racist Sen. Strom Thurmond for more than 30 years. Fact is, there are a lot of good reasons why Sessions shouldn't be Attorney General of the United States—and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt was only too happy to sit down with The Hollywood Reporter's Seth Abramovitch and talk about that topic as well as the new charges that Russia may have enough blackmail material on President-elect Donald Trump to keep him in thrall to Russian President Vladimir Putin for years to come. In the interview, Abramovitch got right down to business, noting that in response to questions by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, perhaps the greatest sexual speech enemy in Congress today, Sessions said he'd have no problem reactivating the Justice Department's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, formerly headed by virulent anti-porn activist Bruce Taylor, even though Sessions admitted he hadn't been aware that the task force had been disbanded several years ago—and that Sessions would "vigorously prosecute" the nation's obscenity laws. "I thought we've moved beyond that," Flynt responded, referring to the Reagan era and the anti-porn report produced by his Attorney General, Edwin Meese. "The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that pornography in itself does not constitute obscenity. Obscenity laws are antiquated. Sessions can talk all he wants, but it's very, very difficult to get 12 people on a jury to vote to convict someone on pornography. Pornography is the purest form of art there is. And so if you want it out of magazines, if you want it out of movies, fine—but how about the thousands of art galleries around the country that display pornographic art?" Flynt went on to distinguish the more mainstream porn produced by the American adult entertainment industry from the "defecation and urination and stuff like that. The fringe aspects, scatological behavior and stuff like that" which is imported from Europe and some other areas, which he said might lead to obscenity convictions for its makers/importers in spite of juries having become more open to sexual material in general. However, he admitted that the "new conservatism" sweeping into Washington might even cause problems for mainstream Hollywood, "because nobody wants to produce a film they can't get distributed because of the rating [NC-17]. It does have a chilling effect on filmmakers and the First Amendment in general. You can lose free expression and free press as easily as you gained it." Flynt also took Trump to task for nominating so many extreme conservatives to administration posts, not the least of which was his VP choice, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. "They're all hypocrites," Flynt declared. "Pence is dying to get into the White House. Pence is worse than him. Pence got a law passed in Indiana legislature that if a woman has an abortion, he forced her to have a funeral service for the fetus. Those people are nuts. As for Trump, his whole game is intimidation. That's what he does with his tweeting. That's how he controls people, by intimidating them and making them afraid of him. He does the same thing with women." And as for the memos uncovered by Buzzfeed alleging that Russia's Federal Security Service has enough video footage of Trump watching or taking part in kinky sex acts, Flynt said such revelations, if true, didn't surprise him. "I've known all that," Flynt told Abramovitch. "We were investigating many of the same activities, but we couldn't nail it down. We knew it had to be something really, really big to get him because nothing was really sticking to him. He's going to say it's all a lie. He's the biggest liar I know. Every time he opens his mouth he tells a lie... That bus Billy Bush was on and Trump was talking about grabbing women by the puss and how you got to treat them like shit to get what you want? That's Trump. That's the real Trump. Somehow he got through all that before the election." Flynt also expressed his disappointment with the electorate, describing the typical Trump voter as "the type of guy who'd show up to a Trump interview with a Budweiser in his hand." "You know, George Washington once addressed this issue of a misinformed electorate, and that's very important," Flynt said. "The founding fathers recognized that, if you're a low-information voter who can make a decision without having facts — I call them the low-hanging fruit. That's the people that put Trump in office. And they're going to regret it." Trump even opined that we'd likely be "stuck with [Trump] for a while," noting, "They can't impeach him, because you have a Republican Congress. But if for some reason you get him out, then you got Pence. And believe me, Pence is worse that Trump." Nonetheless, Flynt expects Trump to, at some point, "implode." "Even the dumb rednecks that put him into office have to realize that they didn't get that job, that raise they were looking for," Flynt predicted. "And so once he loses faith, he will go fast. He can't continue this way... Maybe he thinks he can't turn people against him, but eventually he will." The full interview can be read here.