On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the panel brought Hollywood director Rob Reiner on to promote his upcoming film LBJ. The outspoken left-winger was very comfortable going into attack mode on President Trump when prompted, but upon being asked about the allegations of rape and sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein, Reiner was extremely reluctant to address the issue at length.
The segment in question, unsurprisingly enough, started off with a discussion of the actual movie and what was required for actor Woody Harrelson to get into the character of President Johnson. However, in spite of ostensibly being about promoting the movie, the conversation inevitably turned to politics and, of course, Trump:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I have to ask your take, your thoughts on Donald Trump, as it stands right now, especially given, oh Lord.
WOODY HARRELSON: [laughing] Oh, I’m so psyched you asked him that.
BRZEZINSKI: [talking under Woody] Do we have an hour? Okay.
ROB REINER: [laughing] Have you, have you-
BRZEZINSKI: [talking over Rob] Rob Reiner. Trump. Go.
REINER: Have you, have you, just, just look at my Twitter account. That's all you need to know!
[panel laughs]
REINER: No, no, we're in the strangest time in American history. This is a man who’s supremely unqualified, who has no business being there except for the fact that he got elected, you know, by the, by the, not the majority, but by the Electoral College. And it's like a nightmare that you wake up every morning and you can't get out. Most times you wake up from a nightmare and you're done. You go to,-
BRZEZINSKI: [interjecting] Yeah.
REINER: -you can't escape this nightmare that we're in. It’s, it’s, every day is something horrible.
It’s a bit disconcerting to know that left-wing activists like Reiner barely believe in the legitimacy of the electoral system, although this isn’t that surprising given Hollywood’s general reaction to Trump’s presidency. Otherwise, his comments were pretty tame fare by Morning Joe’s standards.
As a follow up though, instead of continuing to harp on the narrative of Trump being an evil, stupid, sociopathic, sadistic tyrant, Mika changed the topic to the Weinstein allegations, and Reiner did not seem too pleased. He twice denied that Hollywood has a culture of tolerating criminal sexual behavior and instead found a way to turn the conversation back to Trump:
BRZEZINSKI: And, speaking of horrible, sorry to take the conversation and just, like, drop it like a rock, but I gotta ask you about Harvey Weinstein, not about him, but the, but everything we're reading and the stuff that is backed up, and for sure it seems so pervasive. It seems so supported. Is this how the industry operates-
REINER: [interjecting] No.
BRZEZINSKI: -and could we have an hones-, are you sure?
REINER: Yeah. Here's the thing. Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting. Let's just say that. But Fox News had that. Clarence Thomas-
BRZEZINSKI: [interrupting] But are we, are we sort of taking the veil off?
REINER: [talking under Mika] But wai-. No. I think what we’re doing now is it's lifted this thing and put it front and center in a big way. When, and I, this to me is the biggest problem. Women have a hard time. They're either not believed, they say they asked for it, or they’re punished. How can they go up against the world that they're in when they vote for a person who actually admitted to sexually harassing women who becomes President of the United States. How do you fight that?
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
REINER: We elected this man who actually said he abused women.
The director tried to keep on blaming Trump for women not coming out about sexual abuse, but was abruptly cut off by Scarborough. Joe appeared to jump in because he was unhappy that Reiner was trying to avoid having to substantively discuss the Weinstein issue. The resulting exchange got quite testy:
REINER: So, s-
JOE SCARBOROUGH: [interrupting] We actually, we actually asked you though, no, we actually asked you about Harvey Weinstein, and a lot of women are saying-
REINER: [starts talking over Joe] Well I am saying about Harvey Weinstein.
SCARBOROUGH: -they raped ‘em. But, but, but, but, hold on though, but, but, but, we agree with you on Donald Trump,-
REINER: [talks over Joe again] No, no, this is not about Donald Trump. This is-
SCARBOROUGH: -and I’ve always agreed with you on Donald Trump. I don't agree with you, I, I, I, I don’t agree with you on Clarence Thomas. Telling inappropriate jokes and raping women are two completely different things. There’s a false equivalency there, but the Republican Party has been pathetic in what they have turned, the evangelical community has been pathetic in turning their blind eye to Donald Trump. My question has to do not with Donald Trump or the evangelicals or Republicans, I'll attack them. What about you and Hollywood? Has Hollywood been pathetic about turning a blind eye to this behavior?
REINER: That's what I was getting to. ‘Cause this is not about Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump. What this has to do with is women having the inability to break through. And what it's gonna take is the men to come forward and say, when they see something like this, to do something, whether it's in Hollywood with Harvey Weinstein or whether it's at Fox News. It takes a long time for these things to come through. Look at what Bill Cosby did. It took years before women were able to come through, and they’re only coming out now because the floodgates have opened. Let's use this opportunity to have a real conversation and talk about what men need to do, because women cannot fight this battle by themselves.
Good on Joe and Mika for repeatedly pressing a prominent Hollywood director on the Weinstein abuse scandal, something that the hosts have been pretty well on top of ever since the allegations first came out almost two weeks ago (as evidenced by Brzezinski’s earlier public threats to cancel a three-book deal with Weinstein Books right after the story broke). Perhaps the fact that Scarborough had to explain to a Hollywood director that “[t]elling inappropriate jokes and raping women are two completely different things” is symptomatic of why Hollywood has had such a hard time dealing with a culture that is far too tolerant of sexual misconduct.
Perhaps the next time that Morning Joe has Rob Reiner on, instead of asking him to bloviate about how terrible Trump is, the hosts should ask Reiner about whether or not his "Committee to Investigate Russia" is doing anything to expose Hillary Clinton’s allegedly extensive connections to the Russian government and Putin.
