Documentarian Ken Burns this week blasted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as "an enemy of the state" that he hopes to see "in jail," in an interview with The New York Times’ "Sway" podcast.
Burns joined the podcast earlier this week to discuss his newest project, a documentary about boxing icon Muhammad Ali that is set to debut on PBS in September, during which he discussed several different topics, including his views on social media.
When asked by host Kara Swisher, "who do you think would be the version of Muhammad Ali in 100 years?" Burns said that Georgia’s Stacey Abrams is "the real deal," and added, "I hope Zuckerberg is in jail by then."
He went on to say, "This is an enemy of the state, and I mean the United States of America. He doesn’t give a shit about us, the United States. He knows he can transcend it. He can get away to any place. And so it’s just about filthy lucre, that’s it."
Burns also took aim at Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who he said is "complicit," and called for a legal investigation into Facebook and its contemporaries that he likened to the post-World War II trials that took place in Nuremberg, though he noted that this is unlikely.
"These people — and Sheryl is a complicit — the Nuremberg of this, is if it ever happens, which it won’t, will be pretty interesting," he said. "The way that we’ve been able to temporize and say, oh, it’s okay, we’ll just go a little bit further."
Facebook did not respond to request for comment from Fox News.
Burns previously told MSNBC in July that the U.S. is "at this desperate place" due to misinformation about COVID-19 and fighting over election legislation.
"The convergence of all those viruses, the side effects of the misinformation and the paranoia and the lying, voter suppression," he said. "And then the rewriting of our history are saying that we're not interested in facts. We're not interested in the truth. We're not interested in the many varied voices that make us up."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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