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After all these years, the all-encompassing drama of The West Wing feels almost quaint; the scandals and difficulties of being the Commander In Chief as portrayed by Martin Sheen in the series pale in comparison to everything that is happening in the world right now, something that isn’t lost on the iconic actor. For Sheen, the biggest takeaway from The West Wing is how big and important the government actually is – and just how frightening it is to imagine someone like Donald Trump tearing it down.

“I couldn’t believe the show got picked up,” Martin Sheen told a packed audience at GalaxyCon Richmond this year when asked about surprises from the series. “And I couldn’t believe that we had a successful season because the show was clearly political and it was clearly liberal and democratic.”

Part of the liberal portrayal of the White House and the government on The West Wing reminded Martin Sheen of just how fragile the systems that keep our society running are. “We represented all of these people whose jobs are in jeopardy because of these lunatics that are in there right now. So the basic thing I learned [from] the program and our involvement in it is that we’re not asked to be successful; we’re only asked to be faithful and that’s fallen on all of us now.” While he doesn’t name Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE at the panel, it is pretty clear that Martin Sheen isn’t terribly impressed with what the current administration is doing. 

“Aside from the military, which is just about two-and-a-half million, most of the government as we know, and we’re coming to know how important they are, are a little over three million that stay from administration to administration and they are the ones that are now on the front lines and falling like… wounded soldiers now,” Martin Sheen explained, feeling almost like he was on the campaign trail as President Bartlet again. “We’ve got to support these people and we’ve got to support these organizations. How in the hell can you conceive of destroying even any one of those agencies, starting with the Department of Education?”

It is worth noting that GalaxyCon Richmond 2025 was held in late March, before the Trump administration unleashed a new wave of chaos with their seemingly random tariffs, which probably would have given Sheen something totally different to rail against during the panel. Instead, he ended by speculating about the potential goal of Trump’s actions, musing that “I guess if you want to ban books, just don’t educate anybody. Maybe that’s the plan?”

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