Rob Reiner: ‘Bruce Springsteen Is 100 Percent Right' About Trump
For legendary director and outspoken Democratic donor Rob Reiner, choosing sides between Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump in their current war of words didn't require much deliberation. 'Bruce Springsteen is a hundred percent right,' he says, in an interview for an upcoming print issue of Rolling Stone. 'I mean, you have to be a moron to not think that everything that Bruce Springsteen said is true. And there's nothing that Donald Trump can do to him unless he's able to turn this country into a full-blown autocracy, which he's trying to do. And because he's so dumb and he's such an incompetent person, he'll fail, just like he's failed with everything he's ever done in his life.'
But Reiner says that Americans still need to fight against what he sees as an effort to 'take a 250-year democracy and turn it into an autocracy. We're gonna have to fight like crazy to preserve this… Millions of people died so that fascism wouldn't come to our shores, so that we'd preserve our democracy, and 80 years later, we're faced with a possible fascist takeover. We're gonna fight hard to make sure that that doesn't happen… We have to keep Trump's feet to the fire, because for the countries that have become autocracies, for the most part, it takes years to start changing the constitution, to start changing the electorate, to make the disinformation take hold.'
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Meanwhile, Reiner says he's 'really mad' at Jake Tapper for Original Sin, his new book with Alex Thompson about Joe Biden's decline. The book features a dramatic scene during a star-studded Los Angeles debate party as Biden implodes: In its telling, Reiner begins yelling 'We're fucked! We're going to lose our fucking democracy because of you,' directing the latter remark at another VIP guest: Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris' husband, who is said to be taken aback.
Reiner says it's absolutely true that he was yelling 'we're fucked' — 'I did say that. There's no question about it.' But he says he was 'yelling at the wind,' not at Emhoff, and didn't say 'because of you.' A spokesperson for the book responds: 'Jake and Alex stand by the reporting that has been confirmed by numerous sources in the room.' Representatives for the book also shared a screenshot from what they said was one of the sources, who wrote, 'from what I remember, he did say, 'because of you.''
'I wasn't yelling at Doug Emhoff,' Reiner insists. 'What am I gonna do? I'm gonna yell at Doug Emhoff and say 'it's all your fault?' What does that mean, even? It makes me look like an idiot. Yes, I was so frustrated. That part is true. I was frustrated and I did yell, and I was talking to J.B. Pritzker afterwards [too], and I said, 'we're really fucked.' There's a lot of blame to go around, but I certainly would not blame Doug Emhoff for the fact that Joe Biden had a crappy debate.'Reiner recently finished a sequel to 1984's classic Spinal Tap, reuniting the original cast — it's due in theaters Sept. 12. A 4k restoration of the original film is also set for a limited run in theaters this summer, from July 5 to 7.
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