Donald Trump says he’s amazed Sean Penn was able to score interview with El Chapo
Guzmán, Trump and Penn (Photos: Reuters, AFP)
Donald Trump says he’s kind of amazed actor Sean Penn was able to score an interview with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán for Rolling Stone as the world’s most wanted drug kingpin was on the run from Mexican authorities.
The Republican frontrunner was asked by a New Hampshire radio host Monday if he thought there should be an investigation into Penn’s secret meeting with El Chapo in Mexico three months after the drug lord tunneled out of a maximum security prison.
“Well, I guess there should be,” Trump said in the interview, which was first published online by BuzzFeed. “But it was sort of amazing the way he got in there, and all of the people that are looking for him couldn’t find him, and here’s a guy sitting down with a rather long interview.”
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According to Penn, the seven-hour sit-down was brokered by Kate del Castillo, a popular Mexican actress who had been in contact with El Chapo before and after his escape.
Penn’s 10,000-word article was published online Saturday, a day after Guzmán’s recapture. A Mexican law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Guzmán’s unlikely meeting with Penn helped lead them to the notorious drug lord. But Mexican authorities say they still want to question Penn and del Castillo about their interview.
Penn poses with Guzmán in an undated photo taken for interview authentication purposes. (Rolling Stone)
“We have bigger problems in this country,” Trump said Monday, “but I guess it is a little amazing that he was able to get an interview with a guy that everybody else was looking for.”
On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough called Guzmán’s boasts about global drug monopoly “maddening” but declined to comment on possible repercussions for the 55-year-old American actor.
“One thing I will tell you is that this braggadocious action about how much heroin he sends around the world, including the United States, is maddening,” McDonough said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
On ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he found Penn’s interview “grotesque” but not a violation of law.
“If one of these American actors who have benefited from the greatness of this country, who have made money from our free enterprise system, want to go fawn all over a criminal and a drug trafficker in their interviews, they have a constitutional right to do it,” Rubio said. “I find it grotesque.”
ALSO READ: Who is Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress who brokered Sean Penn’s interview with El Chapo?
Penn defended his interview on Monday, telling the Associated Press in an email that he’s "got nothin’ to hide.”
And according to Penn, Trump’s name came up in his conversation with Guzmán, who last fall reportedly issued a $100 million bounty for the brash real estate mogul after his incendiary campaign comments about Mexican immigrants.
“I am reminded of press accounts alleging a hundred-million-dollar bounty the man across from me is said to have put on Donald Trump’s life,” Penn writes. “I mention Trump. El Chapo smiles, ironically saying, ‘Ah! Mi amigo!’”
