Morgan Freeman Calls Trump a 'Convicted Felon' and Unleashes Profane Takedown on Live TV

morgan freeman, 88, paused on MS Now's The Last Word, asked to curse and then declared that the man in the White House is a "convicted felon" who is "leading us down a sh*thole, " remarks that came as he promoted his Amazon Prime Civil War miniseries, The Gray House.

Morgan Freeman asked permission — then spoke plainly

Sitting across from host Lawrence O'Donnell, 74, Freeman opened the exchange by asking, "Can I use any profanity?" O'Donnell told him, "You can say whatever you want. " Freeman replied, "Well, we have somebody in the White House who is leading us down a sh*thole, " and pressed the question of how a convicted felon can become president: "I can’t personally understand how a convicted felon—convicted—gets to be president. How do you do that?"

The conviction he referenced and the timing

Freeman referenced the May 2024 conviction of President Trump, 79, on 34 counts of felony falsifying business records and noted that Mr. Trump was elected president six months later despite those first-degree verdicts. Freeman pushed back on defenses of the verdict, saying, "They say, 'Well, he was... ' I don’t care! That ruling went down before he stepped into the Oval Office, so it just doesn’t make sense to me. " He also delivered what one write-up called his own State of the Union address four days after the president's.

The Gray House promotion and back-to-back TV appearances

The on-air takedown came as Freeman was on MS Now to discuss The Gray House, an Amazon Prime Civil War drama he produced that he co-produced with Kevin Costner. Less than 12 hours after the MS Now appearance, Freeman appeared on The View to promote the same project; on that show, Sara Haines asked him to narrate a clip of Punch, the baby monkey from Japan who had gone viral for being bullied in his enclosure, and Freeman obliged with his familiar narration.

Historic comparisons, John Lewis and a call to vote

On The Last Word Freeman warned the country was backsliding and said he was "constantly reminded of Germany in 1935, what was happening there. " He described "the brownshirts, those people that are marching through—particularly Berlin—and rounding up people, putting them in boxcars, and sending them off, " and added that "this administration wants to build large detention centers. " Freeman said young people were living through one of the "worst" times in the country's history — "Absolutely. Absolutely the worst" — and urged a single remedy: vote.

Past appearances, viral false endorsements and how his voice matters

Freeman had previously appeared on the same program to read a posthumous New York Times essay by the late civil rights activist John Lewis, and he lamented how much the country had changed in the six years since Lewis's death. Online misinformation also dogged him: viral posts shared hundreds of thousands of times on X and Facebook falsely claimed Freeman had endorsed Donald Trump’s campaign; Freeman's team had to go through to formally deny that claim because the real Morgan Freeman had appeared in a White House video endorsing Joe Biden alongside other actors who had played fictional presidents. Observers noted that Freeman's decades-long roles in films such as Deep Impact and Bruce Almighty give his voice a particular cultural heft, making his remarks feel weighty rather than performative.

It is unclear in the provided context what Freeman's next scheduled public appearance or promotion will be.