Martin sheen’s lampooning of Trump depicts the tension in American popular culture

By T N Ashok

NEW YORK: When Martin Sheen, who spent years portraying an idealized American president on “The West Wing,” recently castigated Donald Trump as the “biggest nothing in the world,” he articulated a tension that has animated American popular culture for decades: the gap between the leaders we imagine and the leaders we elect.

His spiritual advice to Trump—urging him to “speak from your heart” rather than “your throat,” to embrace humanity over ego—reveals something profound about what fictional presidential narratives teach us and what happens when reality refuses to conform to the script.

Sheen’s intervention exposes a peculiar paradox in American political life. Hollywood has spent centuries

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