Kremlin Goes After Its Ultimate Foe: Rob Reiner

The Russian government announced sanctions against nearly 1,000 Americans Saturday, effectively banning them from entering the country due to their support of Ukraine during the ongoing invasion. However, among the hundreds of politicians, journalists, intelligence officers and professors, a pair of names stand out on the Kremlin’s list: Rob Reiner and Morgan Freeman.

Any chance that Reiner might film the upcoming Spinal Tap sequel in Moscow has been dashed as the filmmaker has been barred from the country for his role as “one of the creators of the Internet resource Investigate Russia.” Reiner has also long pushed the Russiagate theory, going as far as stating that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s “asset.”

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While Morgan Freeman has not tweeted about the Ukraine invasion, the actor was penalized over his voiceover work in a 2017 video messaged that accused “Russia of conspiring against the United States and calling for a fight against our country,” the Russian Foreign Ministry claims; at the time, Russia’s state-controlled media lashed out at Freeman for lending his voice to the Reiner-produced Investigate Russia video, the BBC reported.

The Kremlin’s perfunctory list of 963 sanctioned people includes politicians from both sides of the aisles, and complete opposite ends of the spectrum: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff are listed alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Paul Gosar. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have also been sanctioned by Russia, but as the Washington Post notes, the list excludes one prominent name: former president Donald Trump.

Other sanctioned standouts include George Soros, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos (co-anchors Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan remain unsanctioned) and former Utah senator Orrin Hatch, who is dead.

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