Justine Bateman feels she can breathe again in ‘new era’ after Trump’s victory

Justine Bateman is over cancel culture.

The filmmaker and actress, 58, said the silent part aloud over a Zoom call Tuesday afternoon, about a week after former President Donald Trump won the US presidential election against Vice President Kamala Harris. Pundits on pundits offer all sorts of reasons for his political comeback. Bateman, unlike many of her peers in Hollywood, agrees with those who cite Americans’ exhaustion with political correctness.

“Trying to shut down anyone even wanting to discuss things that are going on in our society has had a bad outcome,” she says. “And we saw in the election results that more people than not are done with it. That’s why I say it’s over.”

Anyone who follows Bateman on social media already knows what she’s thinking—or at least the verbal version of it.

Bateman wrote one Twitter thread last week after the election that began: “Decompressed from walking on eggshells for the last four years.” She “found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period. A very un-American period, in that every question, every opinion, every sympathy or antipathy was held up to a very limited list of ‘permissible positions’ to judge acceptable.” Many agreed with her. The responses read: “Same. It feels like a long war just ended and I’m finally home.” “It’s really refreshing. I already feel freer and optimistic about my child’s future for the first time.” “Your courage and chutzpah are a rare commodity in Hollywood. Bravo.”

Now, she says, she feels like we’re “walking through the door into a new era” and she’s “100% excited about it.”

In her eyes, “everyone has the right to live their lives freely as they want, as long as they don’t infringe on other people’s ability to live their lives as freely as they want. And if you just keep it, so be it.” The problem is that people on both sides of the political aisle have different definitions of offense.

Is ‘cancellation’ over? Trump’s presidential victory and what it says about the future of cancellation culture

Justine Bateman felt the air go out of the ‘Woke Party balloon’ after Trump won

Bateman referred to COVID as an era where if you had a “wrong” opinion of any kind, society ostracized you. “All of this was met with an intense amount of hostility, so intense that people lost their jobs, their friends, their social status, their privacy,” she says. “They were doxxed. And I found that incredibly un-American.”

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in April 2022 served as a turning point in her mind. “The air kind of went out of the Woke Party balloon,” she says, “and I was like, ‘OK, that’s a nice feeling.'” And then now that Trump won and this special team that he has around him right now, I really felt the air go out.”

Today’s trends: Sign up for USA TODAY’s Everyone’s Talking newsletter.

Trump beat Harris in a landslide. Will his shy voters feel emboldened?

Did Justine Bateman Vote for Donald Trump?

Did she vote for Trump? She won’t say.

“I’m not going to play the game,” she says. “I’m not going to talk about the way I voted in my life. It’s irrelevant. It’s completely irrelevant. To me, all I’m doing is expressing that I feel that spiritually there has been a shift and I’m very excited to see what comes out and frankly it’s good for everyone to affirm freedom of speech.

She also hopes “that we can all feel that we are Americans and not fans of rival football teams.” Some may feel it lessens their concerns about reproductive rights, marriage equality, tariffs, what have you.

But for Bateman, she’s just glad the era of “emotional terrorism” is over.

Time will tell if she is right.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Justine Bateman, Donald Trump and the return of ‘free speech’