Actor-director Jason Bateman believes Breitbart News readers and supporters of President Donald Trump are a problem. An admitted “huge fan” of MSNBC, the Arrested Development star told MSNBC host Nicole Wallace it’s a tragedy that the 80 million Americans who reelected Trump willfully “stay insulated from the facts and common sense,” by not “watching MSNBC or reading the New York Times.” His solution? Conservatives need “a talking to.”
“I happen to think MSNBC doesn’t drift from the truth,” Bateman tells Wallace on her The Best People podcast. “They just have this immense amount of really interesting solid facts to talk about and so they don’t have to freestyle and embellish.”
(Note: ratings for MSNBC and Nicole Wallace on MSNBC continue to nosedive)
Talking about winning over voters, Bateman said “there is no attempt to hide [truth] from the Republican voters. It’s ubiquitous. You have to make a real effort to stay insulated from the facts and common sense. It’s everywhere. Except on Fox or Breitbart.”
“The Trump Show, I’m addicted to it. I really am fascinated. I can’t stop watching the things that he does and the things that says and marry that to the fact that there are 80-something million people that would vote again for him tomorrow,” Bateman says before admitting “it’s just a social phenomenon and a political phenomenon that I just can’t get my head around.”
The Horrible Bosses star says he empathizes with supporters of President Trump who have “genuine dissatisfaction with their standing in life or the system and what not. That’s legit. I’m sensitive to that. I respect that.”
“I don’t want to ignore it. We’re all neighbors. We all share this country together,” he says before honing in on “whatever section there is that’s kind of doing it just to stick it to the libs, it’s not schadenfreude,” he says, adding “I am curious to see what they’re going to do when eggs keep going up and gas keep going up.”
But the price of eggs and gas have both dropped dramatically since Trump 2.0 began. It’s headlines like “Nolte: Price of Eggs Down 61% Since Trump Took Office” and “Promises Made, Promises Kept: Memorial Day Set For Lowest Gas Prices in Over 20 Years” — published at Breitbart before Bateman’s confab with Wallace debuted — that Bateman may have insulated (his word) himself from watching MSNBC and reading the New York Times over Breitbart.
He says he’s “not wishing harm on anyone,” but thinks “it’s tragic that the people who are least equipped to bear what the Trump administration is going to yield are a lot of the folks who voted for him. And that’s really freaking sad.”
“The only way to break the fever” of those loyal Trump supporters, Bateman says, is, apparently, for some kind of financial failure to occur.
Bateman, again, may be insulated (again, his word) from the entire story. Several slices of data show:
- A majority of the country says America is on the right track under Trump (a first in 29 years of Rasmussen asking Americans that question).
- President Trump has his highest approval from Americans on his handling of immigration. While Bateman believes (because MSNBC says so?) the administration is “literally knocking on peoples doors today. And pulling them out.”
- Indeed, Jason Bateman is currently outside of the mainstream of American thought, as most Americans say Democrats, like Bateman, should take a “wait and see” approach to Trump’s tenure in power before coming to a conclusion either way.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bateman offers more insight into just how badly Trump has broken the creative process among those Hollywood creators eager to lampoon and or dramatize his return to the White House.
Bateman says he’s been involved with at least two projects involving Trump world characters that he’s had to abandoned “and then backed away from because those are still active storylines.”
“The writers rooms are having difficulty” Bateman says, keeping up with Trump and his ever-evolving story.
Bateman, again, refocuses the conversation on the president’s supporters and asks Wallace if there will ever be a point where “the story will change from the reporting on the outrageousness of Trump, his actions, his decisions, his words and instead move to the people that have voted for him twice?”
“It’s the people who put him there and then put him there again that really deserve a great deal of responsibility and a talking to. I’m sorry,” Bateman continues. “I say that with love they are our neighbors. And I know that they are deservedly aggrieved. But there’s another way to do it. There’s somebody else in the Republican Party that can look after your issues. If it makes you sick to vote for a Democrat, great, vote for a Republican. Tons of my friends are Republican. I have no issues with republicans. It’s this extra step that I think is so unnecessary to follow blindly.”
Again, there are data, like “CNN Poll Shows Democrat Dumpster Fire as GOP Gains with Middle Class,” published before Bateman’s chat with Wallace, that provide some clarity to Bateman’s bewilderment about why Trump increased his support among nearly every demographic of voter from 2016 to 2024.
“It’s upsetting … that’s it’s been a bit of a frog boil. As much as we are aware of the heat it did really sneak up on us. It’s not coming. It’s here. We’re in it,” Bateman insisted. “Like all the way up to and including they’re coming for you. They’re literally knocking on peoples doors today. And pulling them out. And shipping them off. And not just to their home country. Into a maximum security horror den. It’s really heartbreaking.”
“And I refuse to believe the folks on the other side are numb to it. They deeply care about this country. We all do. I’m just heartbroken that somehow they have found a way to shield their eyes and their ears from the current status,” Bateman went on to say about Trump voters. “And they could be so helpful to fixing that. It doesn’t take a lot of them. It only takes a few of them to say you know what, my bad. I’ll make a better choice next time. And they don’t even have to admit it. That’s why there’s a little current you can close behind you when you go into the booth.”
Bateman says, without evidence, Trump criticizing Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen is him creating “the predicate for the IRS going all the way into Beyoncé’s finances, Springsteen’s finances. There’s nothing there but he’s set up the predicate for it. And now he’s just going to make their financial life miserable.”
“They are by choice keeping themselves insulated for those facts. Or when they do hear them they are using their intelligence to discount it. And somehow feel more intelligent to image there’s actually a conspiracy and that there’s a deep state. And somehow that’s a more complicated thought and so that makes them feel smarter. There’s not some big effort to dupe American into thinking that Donald Trump is a bad guy.”
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know About Trump. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter and instagram@jeromeehudson