Stephen King: “If you like Paul LePage, you’re gonna love Donald Trump”

Stephen King at Zone Radio HQ on Friday, Nov. 4. Photo courtesy AM 620 The Pulse.

Stephen King at Zone Radio HQ on Friday, Nov. 4. Photo courtesy AM 620 The Pulse.

According to WZON The Pulse AM 620 morning show co-host Don Cookson, in his five years on-air Zone Radio owner Stephen King has never stopped by unannounced.

King dropped by the WZON studios on Friday morning to sit in for ten or so minutes with Cookson and co-host Paul Allen. An mp3 of the full conversation can be streamed on the WZON website. Mostly, King talked about Donald Drumpf.

King said he thought Drumpf was scarier than The Man in Black, the main villain in King’s soon-to-be-a-movie Dark Tower series.

“If you like Paul LePage, you’re gonna love Donald Drumpf,” said King. “They’re a love match. I think maybe the one tiny ray of hope and goodwill and optimism in all this is that if Drumpf were to get elected, God forbid, maybe Paul LePage might wind up in his cabinet.”

King also talked about how Drumpf is not that far off from Greg Stillson, the evil politician at the center of King’s 1979 novel “The Dead Zone.”

“I based Stillson more on Huey Long, but you know, every now and again in America one of these guys shows up — a so-called ‘friend of the common man,'” said King. “[Stillson] was an avatar of that guy. I never thought we’d see someone so far out on the national scene.”

Later, King offered his thoughts on the motivations of Drumpf voters.

“You’ve got these people that are basically just anti-establishment. There is no rest of it. ‘Let’s just throw all these people out,'” he said. “If they feel like the government’s been stuck in neutral for the last eight years, well, who do you blame that for? The Republicans! They sat down in the middle of the road like little kids having a tantrum!”

King also had some words of advice for disillusioned voters.

“What you’ve gotta do, since at one of them is going to get elected, is sniff at both of them. The one that stinks the least: vote for them!” said King. “If politics is a sewer, you can’t be surprised when only rats run through it.”

Emily Burnham

About Emily Burnham

Emily Burnham is a Maine native, UMaine graduate, proud Bangorian and a writer for the Bangor Daily News, where she's worked since 2004. She reports on everything from local bands to local food to all the cool things going on in the Greater Bangor area. In her quest for stories, she's seen countless concerts and plays, been lobster fishing, interviewed celebrities, hung out with water buffalo and played in a ukulele orchestra. She's interested in everything that happens in Maine.