LOS ANGELES – Actor Samuel L. Jackson came to the defense of Muslim Americans while doing promotion for his new film “The Hateful Eight,” out in theaters on News Years Eve.

During an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Jackson said Muslim Americans are “the new young black men” and that he had hoped the San Bernardino shooting was conducted by a white male. 

‘I feel sorry for everybody who looks Middle Eastern right now,’ Jackson said. “I can’t even tell you how much that day the thing that happened in San Bernardino — I was in Hawaii — how much I really wanted that to just be another, you know, crazy white dude, and not really some Muslims,” Jackson said 

Jackson, famed for his roles in “Pulp Fiction,” “Snakes on a Plane,” and dozens of other films, said the shooting was distressing because it helped focus public suspicion on Muslim Americans, in a way that earlier attacks on Paris and Fort Hood did not.

“It’s like: ‘Oh, shit. It’s here. And it’s here in another kind of way,’” he said. “Now, okay, it happened on an Army base and it happened somewhere else. But now? It’s like they have a legitimate reason now to look at your Muslim neighbor, friend, whatever in another way.”

Jackson added that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, his occasional golfing partner, is running on a platform of hate.

“There’s absolutely nothing I can do,” he said. “There are some other people that aren’t as open about what he’s saying that are running also, you know, that are just as crazy, that have just as much ill will toward the common man — and not just the common black man. People who don’t have a certain amount of money don’t mean anything to them.”