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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
