Sean Penn returns from Ukraine — and says Zelensky 'embodies everything that is the American aspiration'

Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian activist Sean Penn was the first post-pandemic in-studio guest on MSNBC's "The Last Word" after returning to America from Ukraine.

MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell asked Penn about meeting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky the day before Vladimir Putin's invasion began.

"There are the privileges in life of seeing your children born and seeing them find happiness and then there is the sort of macro, it's hard to come by," Penn said. "And it was in that macro, and personally, that man — one of the great privileges that anyone could ever have."

Penn, the founder of Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), said there was a lot Americans could learn from Zelensky.

"We've got to get back on track together and realize that, you know, Ukraine, with all its diversity, has a unity we've never seen in modern times with the challenge it has," he said. "And if we can't do that — much less supply the military resources they need, because they'll fight the fight, they just need the resources — but if we can show solidarity and acknowledge the inspiration that that is, as a man, as a leader, as a nation, the Ukraine has become, then I don't know where we fall in the legacy of life."

O'Donnell noted there were widespread worries that Zelensky would be killed in the first days of the war.

"When you're moved as I was by this kind of courage and the tenderness of his humanity is present also. I don't have much time to decide if this is my friend, I don't know if I'll see him again, so I decided he's a great friend that I love," Penn said. "And so the part of me that wanted to say -- maybe not be in Kyiv, finally such an arrogance, because who are we, the echoes of 'give me liberty or give me death' This man embodies everything that is the American aspiration. and what an opportunity for all of us to see living example of what we want to be and be part of creating that and defending it."

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