Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Bonus Episode: Trump’s Response To Rob Reiner’s Murder Was DESPICABLE

Transcript

Bonus Episode: Trump’s Response To Rob Reiner’s Murder Was DESPICABLE · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm coming to you after the news I taped previously.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I taped the episode on Sunday evening, but before we
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: found out about Rob Reiner. And I'll be honest when
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I think about the introduction to the episode earlier for
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: my podcast, and it was focused more of what happened
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in Australia. You know, by the time I woke up
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Monday morning, it was felt like a totality of just grief,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: you know, had sort of been piled on top of us.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Whether you're thinking about what happened at Brown University, what
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: happened in Australia, and then just the gruesome attack on
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Rob Reiner and his wife and the murder of those two,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: it was just collectively, you know, just you wake up
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in sort of a funk, feeling just really just I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: can't you know, look, look, everybody processes these things differently.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I don't want to assume other people are processing but
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: you're just feeling really just down, you know. I happened
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to Actually, my wife and I just watched spinal Tap
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: two Friday evening. It was you know, there we were
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: looking for something to watch. We finished Ploribus and we
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: weren't ready to fall asleep. We had seen the new
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: sort of that, and I was like, oh, I've been
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: meaning to take a look. And I think the second
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Spinal Tap finally started streaming this weekend, so it was
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: getting certainly promoted on my algorithm because I am a
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: gen xer, right, I am the target audience for this.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And in fact, my wife and I and were remarking,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: just you know, not all of these sort of throwback
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: sequels work, right, You've heard me say Naked Gun didn't work.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: But this one worked, and it was sort of it
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: was because Reyner knew, you know, I just understood whatever
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it was. He just sort of he understood what Spinal
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Tap was trying to be, what they were, and it
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was just sort of it was just well done. Not
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: all those sequels are easy to pull off. Sometimes they're
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: just simply money grabs. This one didn't. It felt sure
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: there was a there was there was an opportunity, but
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: it felt like it was well constructed, well thought out,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and had the right right amount of throwback and look forward.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And then I saw what the President said about Rob
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Reiner and it was so disgusting, It was so awful,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It was so classless, and I know we're all exhausted
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: from being exhausted by him, right, But at the end
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of the day, whether we like it or not, the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: President of the United States is our representative, is our
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: collective representative. And you know, I certainly go into the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: voting booth thinking about that. You know, is this person
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the best representative of America? You know, and a moment
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: when you need somebody to put the country first, at
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a moment when you need somebody to be empathetic, does
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this person have that skill set? And look, we've had
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: presidents that have been better at it than others. Some
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: are really good at it. They just have that that,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you know. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, all
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: three of them always felt like, you know, they met
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: moments when they when it needed to be done. Ronald
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Reagan would meet moments when he'd done. H. W. Bush
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Actually he had a harder times at times. It maybe
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: explains why he didn't get a second term. Right. Bill
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Clinton just had had that extra factor to it. But
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in general, we've always had a president that knew how
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to put you know, sort of not put them insert
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: themselves into everything. And you know, just to the comment himself,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the idea that the President the United States implied that
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Rob Reiner's political disagreements with Donald Trump or what got
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: him murdered. It's essentially what he's saying. Can you just
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: pure and utter in sanity to think that that's a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: level of sick narcissism? And I'm not going to sit
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: here and say I'm an expert at trying to diagnose people,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: But my god, how narcissistic do you have to be
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: to assume everything is about you, that everything is about
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: this moment about you, and you have to assert you know,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: there's the cliche, you know, the famous quote about Teddy Roosevelt.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: He wanted to be the bride at every wedding and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the corpse at every funeral. I mean, this is a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: form of that mental illness on display for all of
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: us to see. But you know there are times, you know,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: on one hand, look, I think we're all used to
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: it by now. Look, I believe the reason he didn't
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: win reelection in twenty twenty is his inability to have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: empathy during COVID Right, he just was not the person
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: we wanted to deal with that moment. He was not
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: handling it well, he was not understanding it. He was
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: not getting it, and it was just like give you know,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: we need some we need some restoration of normality. And
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Biden was seen as sort of a comfortable figure, a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: previous vice president. He sort of he knows how, he
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: understands the rules of the road. He will do those
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: basics right, you know, he will show the right amount
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of empathy. He will work, you know, not try to
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: exploit people the way the way the way Trump can
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: be so exploitive of a moment and you're just sitting
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: there and you know our inability, you know the fact
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is trying to always make somebody's politics
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the first thing you think about, rather than anything else
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: in their lives is what's broken about America right now?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And he broke it right. He is exploiting this moment.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: He is right. The social media companies and Donald Trump
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: have collectively have tried to break us this way, and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: he is he is broken, and he is trying to
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: apply his broken lack of empathy, lack of emotion on
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the rest of us. But he wants to apply politics
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to every thing. When Rob Reiner's artistic work deserves to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: be celebrated as a great American period, Okay, no matter
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: his politics, he provided art that entertained so many of
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: us left and right. Ted Cruz's favorite movie is Princess Bride.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruse probably knows every single lie. I know. Ted
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Cruz and Rob Reiners don't share the same politics. But
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz loved Princess Bride, loved the creation of Rob Reiner.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And I think, no matter what you think of Ted Cruz,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the last thing I think he would do is behave
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: is horrendously and is inhumane. And that's what this was.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: As Donald Trump did about this, there are many people,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: whether it's spinal tap, whether it's when Harry met Sally,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: whether it's All in the Family, which, by the way,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a program that sort of promoted dialogue between people that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: disagree him. The liberal son in law are Chiep Bunker
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a more intellectually honest version of Donald Trump, at least
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: one with empathy. And I'll tell you it is. It
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: is one of the things that I've pledged to do
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: with what I want to do here is to try
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: to be a bit more dispassionate about Trump, because there
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: is there is you know, some people are so focused
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: on Trump. We've got to figure out how do we
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: how do we prevent the next Trump? And how do
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: we move past Trump? How do we get past this?
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: We're better than this. We have we have, we have
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: real we should have real debates between how big or
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: small government is, how much you know, how high or
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: low taxes should be? You know, whose responsibility should it
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: be to provide healthcare? These are important debates. I think
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the distinctions between left and right are interesting and should
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: be negotiated and should be debated. Donald Trump is not
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: a right winger a left winger. He is he is.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: He is a virus of polarization right. He is sort
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: of the symptom of polarization at its worst. He is
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: exploitive of the situation in order to garner power. But
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you know it is. He is not representative of real conservatives.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: He is not representative of normal acting human beings, regardless
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of where they are in the political spectrum. Who know
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: that when there's a tragedy in my goodness, the man
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: has not been buried yet, his family and friends are
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: still trying to figure out what the hell happened. There
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: hadn't even been an arrest yet at the time that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: he puts out this tweet. And again, you could sit
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: here and say, oh, we're obsessing over a mean tweet.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: But he's all of our representatives right at the end
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: of the day, our president is our president. And it
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: is embarrassing. It is classless. And I'm going to quote
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: my friend David Brodie of the Christian Broadcasting Network. He
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: put it in another way. He just he called it
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: sad because what it tells you. It says so much
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: about who Donald Trump is. Right, he is a man
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: with you know, I've brought this up before. He is
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: so broken emotionally. He has no there's no set of
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: people that are his friends. The reason he has to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: go out to the mar A Lago dinner table all
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the time and to celebrate with is he has no
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: personal friends people. It's clear there aren't people that people
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: that are around him because they want to be close
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: to power and they think they can grift him or
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: exploit him. People don't hang around with him. Maybe they
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: hang around him because he's he's entertaining for all the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: wrong reasons, Like you can't believe what he'll say, you
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: can't believe the gossip he wants to gossip about, so
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: he's like shut He's sort of like a shock jock. Right,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it's entertaining, but you realize you don't want to leave
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: your kids with him. You don't want your grandkids to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: learn from him. You don't want people to copy that behavior.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And you know, he it's so funny. He's so desperate
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: to be famous, and he's so desperate to leave a legacy.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: He's leaving a legacy, and it's people are gonna, they're
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: gonna they're going to race to erase him in different ways.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: You know, he's trying to force his way onto the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: zeitgeist of America. Right, he's going to insert himself into
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: America's two an and fiftieth birthday. He wants to put
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: his name on the Kennedy Center. He wants to put
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: his name on the White House, so that you know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: there's the Truman Balcony and there'll be the Trump Ballroom, right,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: he wants he's hoping that that's somehow going to give
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: him something that I guess life has not been able
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: to give him. Right. He has been sort of one
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of the most successive failures in American history. Right, He's
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a failed casino owner, a failed developer, a failed an
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: owner of golf courses, meaning that He's never made money
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: on these businesses, and only his political power and fame
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: has allowed actual value to created with his developments and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: all of this stuff. But he was actually failures at
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: all of those things. Probably the most successful thing he
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: was able to do was have a TV show in
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The Apprentice, that was a failure, a success until it
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: became a failure, and ultimately he's going to be considered
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a political failure. He knew how to get elected, he
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: knew how to get campaign. But when you behave this way, right,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: it's everybody I'm sure that has had a moment where
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you've had a tragedy in your life. You always remember
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the people that surprised you and that positive or negative,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those where in some ways
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Trump isn't surprising by his behavior, but I think this
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: is one of those where even those that want to
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: defend him and I look, I know that there are
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: people that voted for Donald Trump who didn't like them,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and in fact, he is sort of the you know,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I call it the a whole constituency, right, meaning there
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: are people who believe politics is so seemly, seeming unseemly,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: it's so such a such a sort of pit of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: grimy people and grifters that hey, guess what it's going
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to take an a whole to govern and to get
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: involved in politics. I know there's some people think that, right,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's you know, I happen to believe that that, yes,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt is a griminess to politics. There's the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: metaphor that, you know, the sausage you don't want to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: see the sausage, the sausage made in how Congress acts.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: But I think a lot more of us want to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: know that we have. You want the president to be
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: able to go high and low, and this president only
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: knows how to go low. As president, never knows how
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: to go high. And anytime he's even tried to pretend,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: he's always reading so you know, sort of directly in staccato,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: like from the prompter, it's clear he's never personally felt
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: these feelings. And again, all you have to do is
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: look at it. You know, he's His personal relationships don't
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: last about every six years, he has a new band
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of advisors. This goes back through his entire professional career.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I've studied it, going all the way back to when
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: he got his start with his father, in the early seventies,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and whoever was in his inner circle lasted somewhere between
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: six and eight years, and they were gone, and they
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: were gone because he wanted him out and they want
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: it out. Right. Michael Cohen is just one of the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the most recent examples of John Kelly. And
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: there is a pattern here, right. Everybody who breaks away
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: from him never has anything nice to say about him,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and it's because of moments like this. And he did
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: his inability to read a room, his inability to be
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: an American before he's a partisan exploiter of our polarization,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and that's what he did. It's gross, it's sick, and look,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: it's going to get an outsized amount of attention. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: you know, some of you may even be criticizing some
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of us that are trying to bring more attention to it, right,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: And this is a case where we could chase every outrage,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and I try not to chase every outrage, but this one,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: this one really pissed me off because it was one
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: of those things where I just I was just feeling
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: so down about humans, right, about society, about what happened
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in Australia, about what happened to brown and then you know,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you realize how much Rob Reiner sort of created so
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: many things that sort of defined pop culture for gen X.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've probably seen a few Good Men more
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: parts of that movie more than any movie I've seen,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: maybe pulp Fiction and Big Lebowski would be second and third.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: For those of you that know me, I just it's
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Rob Reiner deserves to be celebrated. And I'm I'm hardened
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to see so many normal left and right thinking people
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: on social media be disgusted about how the president's behaved
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: over this. But this is one of those moments and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: when you're when when Republicans are trying to figure out, boy,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: why are they you know, why is it harder to
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: motivate the base and why is it harder to win
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: over swing voters? He's becoming less likable every day and
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: when he and this is one of those other things politically,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the economy is not feeling great and he's behaving unlikably,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: it's a toxic mix that actually can accelerate the perception
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of he's losing its status, right, And that's the other
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: thing you have to ask yourself, like this is we
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: know as you get older, the filter goes away. We
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: know he's never had much of a filter as it is,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: but I actually think Donald Trump of eight years ago
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: would have had a little bit more, a little bit
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: more of a small g governor on himself about this
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: moment and maybe have at least waited a few days
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: before doing what he did. But to insert himself the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: way he did, because ultimately he thinks everything is about
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: him and every moment is about him. And just to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: imply the disgusting implication that somehow this murder had something
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: to do with Donald Trump is just it to me,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: should be a red flag that there's something wrong in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: that Oval office at the moment, and perhaps more people
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: need to speak out. We've talked about that in the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: previous administration. Are if you see something, say something, as
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: anybody in this inner circle willing to say, whoa this is?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You know, do we have an issue here? Do we
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: have a problem here? Because this was this is this
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: is unhinged. And if put it this way, if any relative,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm guessing, and I'll just speak for myself, if
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I had a relative that sort of behaved this way,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I'd be questioning what was going on inside their lives
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: at the moment that this is how they're thinking. You're like, wow,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: you are living in a deluded world in a moment
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that that maybe you ought to you ought to not
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: be making very important decisions at the moment. So look,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I think this is It's both revealing and not surprising,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and yet the gut punch in the shock is awful.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. I think this is one that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: will you know, nothing lingers in the Trump era, but
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: some things, you know, this may be this, this may
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: stick to him for a little bit longer than usual,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: especially by doing this sort of in this moment that
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: he chose to do it. All right, I just thought
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: i'd check in on that. If you want more of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: this or I've got uh please check out the The
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Check podcast wherever you get your podcast here on YouTube, Spotify,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: or anywhere else you go. Thanks for listening. H