Actor Jeff Daniels reprised his character from The Newsroom, news anchor Will McAvoy, and went on a television-style tirade about whether or not Donald Trump’s candidacy represents a “best-case scenario” for Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton in a new video produced by Bloomberg Television.
“He’s not the best-case scenario,” Daniels, as McAvoy, told With All Due Respect hosts Mark Halperin and John Heinemann in what is meant to be a shot-for-shot remake of the now-famous first scene of the Aaron Sorkin-penned, notoriously liberal HBO program.
“Donald Trump is a fact-bending loose cannon who alienates mainstream voters with everything he says. But he gets constant media attention for free,” Daniels-as-McAvoy said. “There won’t be a day from now until November when Trump isn’t on every TV channel.”
In The Newsroom, which concluded its three-season run in 2014, Daniels played the fiery McAvoy, the anchor of a fictional cable news network who reported on actual real-world political news, with the show’s second season eventually covering the 2012 United States presidential election.
Last March, Daniels told Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts that his character would interview Donald Trump and “spend an hour on fat pigs.”
Daniels, who supported John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in ’08, also took (fictional) swipes at Hillary Clinton in the Bloomberg skit.
“Sure, she beats Trump in some categories: like millennials, who don’t even show up to vote,” Daniels said of Clinton. “She also leads in number of messages deleted on her personal email server. But that aside, when you ask what makes Trump the best-case scenario for Hillary, I don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about. His tiny hands?”
Daniels raised eyebrows in 2013 when he snagged an Emmy Award for Best Actor for his role as Will McAvoy.
“The fix was in for Jeff Daniels to win on a treacly show that few people watch and most of Hollywood hates. Either HBO paid off every final Emmy jurist. Or else Aaron Sorkin blew them,” wrote Deadline’s Nikki Finke wrote at the time.
During Monday’s full Bloomberg interview, the actor also insinuated that Donald Trump “plays into hatred” and racism.
“Look at anything Trump’s done. It plays into hatred,” he said.
“The hat should say, ‘Make America White Again,’” Daniels said of Trump’s campaign slogan.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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