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Jeff Daniels is a superb actor. I’d even say he’s of the ilk of Cary Grant in that his characters seem so natural and effortless, that sometimes people don’t fully appreciate all the work he puts into them. I saw him on Broadway in Blackbird, a no-intermission intimate two-hander he did with Michelle Williams with a very dark plot. Both actors blew me away. They’re onstage for the whole piece and made a couple hours of two people talking absolutely riveting. He doesn’t play a nice guy in it (much like in the TV series Godless; he totally deserved that Emmy), but even when the character may have been lying, Daniels himself was never lying through what his performance was conveying about the human condition. All that to say, when Jeff speaks up, I’m inclined to listen. (Except regarding rice cake toppings, iykyk.) Well, he recently sat down with MSNBC’s Nicholle Wallace on her podcast The Best People (arguably The Worst Title), and hot damn! Jeff was on FIRE with the truth-telling! He flat out said he hopes Trump voters are losing a lot of money:
“I hope you’re losing tons of money, those of you who thought this would be OK,” Daniels said. “My question is, what are you guys going to do about it?”
Wallace pointed out to Daniels that Michigan — the state in which the “Dumb and Dumber” star has been living since 1986, rather than Hollywood — voted for Trump. She went on to note that the president’s tariffs “are going to hurt your neighbors.”
Wallace has a point. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that General Motors, which is based in Michigan, took a $1.1 billion hit from tariffs in its second-quarter earnings. The outlet notes that although GM still beat analyst expectations for the period, the automaker expects the impact of Trump’s tariffs to worsen.
“I think, at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to do it,” Daniels said of Trump supporters turning on the president. “‘Wait a minute, the grocery bill is what, $180 more? I can’t get that car that we have to have unless I pay another $8,000. What? Who do I blame for that? Who do I see about that?’ One person.”
Daniels then doubled down on his belief that Trump — whom the actor described as a “snake oil salesman — will ultimately lose support not because of his shady morals, but because people will struggle financially.
“At the end of the day, it would be about just the price of eggs, did it go up or down? ‘Because that’s what he told me, he was going to lower the price of eggs or my grocery bill.’ I think that still matters, at least out in the middle of the country, that matters. The money matters.” Elsewhere in the interview, the “Squid and the Whale” star made it clear that Trump’s values are what’s most concerning to him.
“We’ve lost decency, we’ve lost civility, we’ve lost respect for the rule of law — lost it,” Daniels said. “We have normalized verbal abuse on the internet. We’ve normalized bullying; much as the woke generation tried to, you know, change that, it’s back. Out the window goes character, integrity.”
He added, “I mean, nobody has great things to say about politicians. They never have. Go back to Mark Twain. But ideally, we’re supposed to elect the best of us. Not the worst of us. He’s everything that’s wrong with not just America, but with being a human being.”
Yup. That is the awful truth of this sick, depraved political hellscape we call home. Good on Jeff for saying it all so clearly. I completely agree that people voting on the price of eggs was what shifted the margins in the idiot’s favor — even though it showed a total lack of perspective that America was bouncing back from the pandemic faster economically than the rest of the world. So likewise, I tend to agree that it’s people’s finances that will sway their movements in the other direction (should the republic survive). Same with healthcare, disaster relief, and on and on. And the base who most ardently voted for Trump stand the most to lose from the hatchet he’s taking to, oh, basically everything the government does for we the people. But the rest of us will be hurt plenty, too.
Honestly, the only wrinkle to Jeff’s argument — the “it’s the way people feel about the economy, stupid” theory — has been the recent uproar among MAGAts over Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a seemingly moral objection to their dear leader. But is it that, or the indignation of people realizing that Donald Trump lied? To them?? Splitting hairs in the inferno, I know.
Photos credit: Mark Hill/Netflix, Getty Images for Netflix, Getty
Well let’s see a number of trump “voters “ are billionaires so they will be ok. The biggest number of trump “voters” don’t seem to have two nickels to rub together or two working brain cells and they will suffer. Unfortunately the rest of us who didn’t vote for him will suffer too. My guess is the ones who “voted “ for him will not see the light and continue on in their stupidity to not blame him. If stupid hurt there would be a large number of people writhing in pain!
What she said …
“We’ve lost decency, we’ve lost civility, we’ve lost respect for the rule of law — lost it,” Daniels said. “We have normalized verbal abuse on the internet. We’ve normalized bullying; much as the woke generation tried to, you know, change that, it’s back. Out the window goes character, integrity.”
This why/how fascism takes hold. It can only happen with a complete and total collective descent into immorality. The degradation is a necessary tilling of the soil so fascism can sow. Misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry of every stripe is on the rise and becoming more normalized and mainstream.
As far as Trump-supporters go, it’s antithetical for me to root for poor people to get poorer. But it’s also so hard for me to not hate the people who are continuing to support an abhorrent, nihilistic monster who’s hellbent on destroying our country. I keep hoping there will be a great awakening on the Right but alas….
The Right are now white Christian nationalists, who see Tr*mp as their messiah. What he really is is their useful idiot, because the Stephen Millers and Steve Bannons around him use his cult following to support their well thought out strategy to destroy our civil society.
This is why I’ve started viewing them as the recently-converted instead of just folks who support a different political party. Their behavior makes a lot more sense when you view it through that lens.
I’ve said it before around here but there’s a real element of sunk cost fallacy at play, too. These people have staked everything on their belief that he’s gonna make America great again. They’ve lost friends and family members over their support of him, they’ve blown hundreds of dollars on his dumb merch, they’ve made an entire personality out of their unflagging, uncritical, relentless support of Trump. They’ve invested far too much to turn back now.
Exactly! Trump is a means to an end and a useful idiot for warring factions. He’s a puppet. The true Presidents are Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Russell Vought and sadly scum like Curtis Yarvin whose acolytes run rampant in the Trump administration.
@Kitten: that’s a good analogy, ’cause there’s no one more pious than the recently converted.
The zeal of the convert.
“But ideally, we’re supposed to elect the best of us.”
This.
It is wild how the worst American in existence got elected twice. No one expects politicians to be perfect, but usually outright despicable and criminal people are excluded. There was a failure of the GOP to keep him out of the party, or at the very least convict him when he started an insurrection.
And letting Fox News get a hold on half the country has not helped.
I wonder if it’s been scrubbed but there is an old (80s/90s?) tv interview with the monster who currently lives in the White House. He was asked if he thought about running for office. At the time he was a Democrat-or at least gave the party money. He said that if he were to run for office he would run as a Republican because, and I’m paraphrasing here, Republican voters are dumb and will believe anything he says. That interview clip should have been blasted from the rooftops in every GOP majority city the second that monster rode down his gold fucking elevator to announce his campaign. And he was right, and here we are.
@JEB that story has long been debunked
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-republicans-the-dumbest-group-of-voters/
Yes, this is what gotten to me over the past decade. I mean we have high school students putting in the work on Constitution teams and debate teams who could run circles, substance-wise, around the current Republicans in charge. We hold kids to higher standards (or we used to) than those in our highest offices!
I feel like a chump for believing that public service was reserved for the best and brightest and that when Trump was shockingly elected in 2016, that other branches of government and his GOP colleagues would keep him in check. I will never get over the fact that tens of millions of people allowed the worst guy among us to drag us into absolute ruin.
I agree and disagree with him. I don’t feel like the average Democratic voter has lost any decency or our respect for law. I get that the collective “we” has been degraded, but it’s entirely one sided.
Some of the issue is that the “good” people play nice with the amoral monsters. If there were social consequences for voting for a monster then a number of them would have not bothered.
Agreed but it’s less about what individual Americans believe and more about what every lever of society from media to our political institutions are currently tolerating. There are hundreds of things that this administration has done that would be considered career-destroying scandals even 6 years ago and yet here we are, seemingly immune to the insanity of it all. Checks and balances are gone. Congress has ceded all power. The media, corporations, and universities are bribing Trump. The Supreme Court is rubber stamping every unconstitutional thing he has done.
What is a seismic shift feels almost imperceptible at this point and that’s what’s so fucking scary.
Electing a convicted sexual abuser and insurrectionist-inciter to run this country a second time was the beginning of the end.
I think the seismic shifts have been happening for decades. Reagan’s insane policies getting a spit shine from the media for example, as well as their politely ignoring his descent into Alzheimers. Newt Gingrich and the awful people in the GOP in the 90s. The 2000 Supreme Court installing the loser in the election so that we might have “closure” or whatever crap reason they regurgitated, then Bush’s incompetence around 9/11 (Clinton warned the incoming administration with as much detail as he had; I am sometimes of the mind that the dark money behind the GOP made them let it happen in order to continue to move levers), then his lies around WMD and the media cheerleaded the war…
We’ve been boiling to death for eons and people have called people like me crazy, extremists, alarmists, stupid… It’s been pretty obvious where the GOP is going and you are correct, the Democrats’ obsession with comity and congeniality makes me want to slap Amy Klobuchar (as my senator) first, then a dozen other Democrats after her.
I didn’t mean to whitewash the last 40-50 years. I completely agree that there have been a series of events and harrowing time periods that have predictably led to this moment–it didn’t happen in a vacuum. But I do believe this moment is unlike any we’ve seen. I’m old and can admit it–I cried like a baby when Kerry lost and not because I thought he was a great candidate–I just hated Dubs that much. So yes, I remember–vividly
That being said, GW was a neocon; a globalist at heart who believed the US was a force for good in the world. Yes he gave us the horrific Iraq war, but he also gave us PEPFAR. He was a classic capitalist. Trump is an isolationist who thinks that soft power is “giving away free stuff” and international allyship is for suckers. He believes in crony capitalism and oligarchies. He hasn’t gotten us into a pointless war YET but he’s continuing to fund a genocide that he could stop tomorrow with one phone call.
My point being that while I agree that Reagan and GW primed us for Trump, Trump is nevertheless the most frightening and unprecedented culmination of decades of destructive Republican administrations, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before (to say it like Trump lol).
Obama inherited GW’s mess and did a great job of righting a listing ship.
But that doesn’t happen this time around–we won’t fix this mess in my lifetime, much less in 8 years.
The Trump voter base is too stupid to realize that the stock market does not affect their grocery prices or rent …the stock market can soar and they won’t find items any more affordable than before. The headlines can trump-et gains for the economy all they want and it doesn’t do a thing for the blue collar worker. It’s almost as though all he has to do it tell the morons that prices are low and they believe him even as they peer into empty change purses and pay more and more.
They don’t let facts cloud their beliefs.
It’s always been about the economy – Thaler got a Nobel Prize for voting behavior and personal economics. I don’t have a problem with billionaires losing money, but I don’t wish economic pain on anyone else, even if they did vote for Trump. That only makes things worse.
I don’t think Daniels is saying that he wishes people do poorly because they voted for Trump, just that if they do poorly that’s likely the only thing that will make them see what kind of a decision they made electing him.
I don’t know that voters blame themselves for the deficiencies of their chosen candidates. It’s like when George Bush Sr. said “no new taxes” and he raised taxes. People were angry because he went back on his word, not because they voted for him.
My only hope in this context (the economic consequences of electing Felon47) is the knowledge that the wealthy hate losing their money far more than the middle or working classes.
The working class, especially, is used to living on the edge financially. The 98% is far more generous with what they have to share, and far more concerned when voting with issues of emotion, morality, and ethical choices than they are with money, even though everyone SAYS they vote their wallets.
The rich, on the other hand, deeply resent the loss of every penny, even if they are violently extravagant with their own spending choices.
I spent 15 years in banking, and saw it up close: a man with hundreds of thousands in one bank account screaming demands that a FIVE CENT fee be reversed, while people with no money were thanking me for telling them a check cleared.
So when Daniels says he hopes people lose money, I agree — I hope plenty of the wealthy are feeling the bite and regretting their stupidity in supporting these hell-born fascists. Because the rich have the power, in our current system, to oust them all from office.
I agree. It’s the wealthy–the stupid wealthy & the just normal well-off wealthy–that I hope lose money. Hit ’em where it hurts, in the bank account. Meanwhile the rest of us have got to suffer, too. But I like every word Daniels says here.
@BeanieBean
If there were any justice left in this demon-littered hellscape the sociopaths in charge are trying to make of our country, MuskRat The Exploder would be the first to lose his billions in government contracts.
Then be convicted of election tampering, stripped of his citizenship and deported.
That’s a form of eating the rich that I find completely palatable.
Mr. Jaded is a dual Canadian/American citizen and lived in Wisconsin for close to a decade back in the 80s. His take is that a majority of Americans prefer to be spoon-fed political information but will not willingly educate themselves on what is truth vs. fiction. That’s why Trump’s been elected not once but twice because he repeatedly feeds the public sound-bites of fiction and lies in an easily palatable version that sticks in their heads. They don’t worry about his lack of morals and integrity, they just see this famous TV star/carny buffoon skewering his opposition in the rudest, most venal, mendacious way and they lap it up like it’s a season of The Apprentice.
Wow, is that … an age-appropriate wife? For a Hollywood actor?! Goodness me!
They look lovely together.