On Tuesday, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Briefing,” actor and director Rob Reiner said President Donald Trump was bringing American to a point where we might lose our democracy.
Reiner said, “So we’re now in a place where we are really wrestling with whether or not we’re going to have a constitution, whether or not we’re going to have a the American form of democracy and the First Amendment is right at the core of it.”
He continued, “This moment that we’re in right now, it goes way beyond Jimmy Kimmel. It goes way beyond knocking comedians off the air. This is directly out of the authoritarian playbook. Control the media, do whatever you can to control the media so that only your message is getting out. If you look at authoritarians across the globe that’s exactly what they do. So if you want to control Nexstar or Sinclair or Fox News, whatever, and you can all of a sudden consume it all, you know subsume it all, then you have the only platform. You know, they always talk about the presidency as being the bully pulpit. well, if the bully pulpit is you own everything, then it’s impossible for people to, to fight back.”
Reiner added, “It’s a you know, it’s more than a slippery slope. This thing is barreling downhill. And we have, I would say a year to be able to correct this and see whether or not our 250 year experiment continues to to to survive. And we’ll find out but we need everybody to push back, not just comedians. Everybody needs to push back.”
