At the Torino Film Festival in Turin, Italy, today, charlatan Sharon Stone compared President-elect Donald Trump to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
She also said Americans elected Donald Trump because they are dumb and don’t travel enough.
After making that false historical comparison and calling Americans idiots, she said, “My country is in the midst of adolescence. Adolescence is very arrogant. Adolescence thinks it knows everything.”
Chuck note: Have you ever met a liberal who does not think he or she has the answer for everything? There is the old saying, “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
She continued, “Adolescence is naïve and ignorant and arrogant. And we are in our ignorant, arrogant adolescence.”
“We haven’t seen this before in our country. So, Americans don’t travel, who 80% don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naivete.”
There is much to critique about the comments above but let me just focus on passports and travel.
According to USA Today, “In 2024, the U.S. State Department issued a record-breaking 24.5 million passport books and cards, which means more Americans than ever before have passports.”
This is the third consecutive year that the State Department has broken the annual passport processing record (U.S. State Department).
Long story short, as of the 2023 fiscal year, between 42 and 47 percent of all Americans have passports. Based on old-fashioned math, Americans have double the passports that brainiac Sharon Stone says we have.
Now let’s get to Europe, which I am sure in her mind is what she was comparing your neighbors to.
The United States is slightly smaller than Europe in terms of landmass, with Europe being roughly 10% larger depending on how the continental boundaries are defined; the US has an area of around 9.8 million square kilometers while Europe has around 10.5 million square kilometers.
Now that we know the comparable land size between the United States and Europe, Europe has 44 countries, the United States has 50 states.
According to recent data, around 5.8% of all trips taken by European Union residents are made outside of Europe, meaning a significant portion of European travel stays within the continent, with only a smaller percentage venturing further afield.
So, Europeans, which again, she was probably comparing your fellow Americans to, really do not travel outside Europe. Basically, like your neighbor never leaving the United States.
For the record, in 2024, “85% of Americans will travel out of state, and 38% plan to travel internationally. For some, the trips aren’t all pleasure, as 1 in 4 will be traveling for business.”
I could go on about these numbers all day to prove time and again how ill-informed Sharon Stone is and her apparent lack of knowledge regarding her fellow Americans, but I want to share one story that proves my point more than anything else.
This year, I traveled to my 70th country, Türkiye (Sharon would spell it “Turkey”), for work. Approximately 80% of my travel has been for business – not a Hollywood press junket where you are waited on hand and foot.
A decade ago, I attended a reception with some EU parliamentary members. One male member took up Sharon Stone’s false logic and complained that Americans don’t travel enough internationally. Before I could strongly disagree with him, a female member from Belgium jumped in and scoffed at him. She said that this is a silly comparison; traveling within Europe is no different than traveling within the United States. “Sir, you apparently don’t realize how big the United States is, nor do you realize that most of our European Union neighbors don’t travel outside of Europe.” For example, a European traveling from France to Portugal is equivalent to an American traveling from Tennessee to Oregon or Washington State. He quickly shut up and slinked off like the snobby, ill-informed idiot he was.
Americans, yes, travel. You will learn a lot and, frankly, learn to appreciate America more. I love it more each time I leave it and come back, but I would suggest traveling within our own country. We have a lot to learn from our fellow countrymen … excluding Sharon Stone.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
