Jon Voight Blasts Obama

Jon Voight charges that Barack Obama would bring socialism to the United States if he reached the Oval Office, and says Obama is weak on terror.

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Times last week, the Oscar-winning actor adds that he's disturbed by Obama's past associations with what he calls "militant white and black people."

Voight didn't back off those assertions in a wide-ranging interview with Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Tuesday.

He also told Chen he hasn't spoken with his daughter, actress Angelina Jolie, since she gave birth to twins recently.

Jolie stopped talking to her father in 2002 when he said in a TV interview that she had "severe emotional problems."

Several reports online quote them both as saying they're working on mending their relationship. Jolie said in an interview with an Australian newspaper, "We are going to try to get to know each other and maybe try not to be this daddy and daughter, but to be there for each other as friends in the coming years."

In the op-ed piece, Voight says Obama "has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.

"The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America."

Voight also contends, "If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. ... And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend."

Also: "There's not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb."

Voight concludes, " If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way."

Voight observed to Chen that, in the piece, he "asked what are the qualifications of this man to become president of the United States. I find him wanting, and I expressed some of that and my concerns. ... I sat there and I watched this thing and I just came to a point where I said, 'Boy, somebody's gotta start talking about some of the real stuff.' And that's what I felt and that's what I did."

What concerns Voight most?

"His inexperience and lack of judgment. Some of that is indicated by the friendships and mentors he had growing up. We should be very concerned about it."

Voight says he hasn't heard form either campaign since the piece was published. He told Chen he's gotten "a little angry mail, but I've had a lot of support from the other side of things, too, people who have side they appreciated my stating some of this stuff."

As far as his new grandchildren are concerned, Voight admitted he hasn't made plans to see them though, "I'd like to see them, of course. I was one of the first to look it up on the Web and see what they look like. A very beautiful picture coming out."

Voight says he hasn't contacted Jolie since the births, "but hopefully, we'll be in touch and I'll be able to go and see them."

So the first time he did see the twins was online and, "I'm just as delighted as everyone else to see them."

He also denied reports that he'd sent them a gift, noting, "It's not that I wouldn't. It's just that the communication is a little different. It's hard to talk about it like this. But I'm sending my love continuously to Angie and Brad (Pitt, their father) and to the children. We'll see them when I see them."

Would he like to make that effort?

"Oh, yeah, definitely. But I'm working here, and many other things are going on. And I just have been on the -- just been listening to every moment, every comment. You just pray that the children are healthy and the mommy's healthy. It's wonderful."

Voight has a recurring role as a criminal in the upcoming season of "24," and will star in a film this fall, "Pride and Glory," which he describes as a "gritty movie" about a police family in New York. He plays a detective.