Jon Cryer
Appearances
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
It's great to be here. I'm to some degree amazed that some people are being that candid about it, only because we're three months in. I mean, this is pretty remarkable. This is supposed to be a honeymoon. This is supposed to be Trump's honeymoon. Trump's honeymoon is very bumpy so far.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And, you know, a lot of the sort of more cultish aspects of Trumpism will be much, much harder to dislodge from people because it's similar to Brexit. You know, there's very few people in Britain who are willing to just say, wow, that was just a dumb idea. I can't believe I fell for that.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
You know, as supposedly Mark Twain said, that it's much easier to con somebody than to convince them that they've been conned.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
Well, I come at it, even though I'm an actor, I love history. It just keeps repeating. And this type of thing has happened in authoritarian governments in the past. Berlusconi attempted it most recently. This has happened before. And he is as bad as I expected. I had pointed out before the election that it won't be tanks on every corner.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
He'll be turning the United States into an authoritarian state through fear. It's going to it's it's it's people being scared for their jobs, people scared for their businesses and him using the levers of federal power for revenge, which is what he has said he would do. He said he would do that. I mean, I didn't have to be Einstein to figure out that he was going to be doing this.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And that's why I think the point that you were making, which was that, you know, that a lot of these folks seem surprised about this when he talked about doing almost all of this. And by the way, I still feel I have Trump supporters in my family. You know, I feel for them on some level because we in the entertainment industry created this guy.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
You know, we created this image of this billionaire, brilliant guy. And it was never him. He was always kind of a moron. He was he doesn't he still doesn't understand what tariffs are. how they work on the most basic level. You know, he's he's you know, he's got these weird sort of this weird fox brain that's just been addled by 40 years of Fox.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And so he actually believes this this this war to, you know, this trade war to onshore these these manufacturing jobs will actually work. You know, it's you know, there's a million reasons that it won't. And, you know, I I this is this is as bad as I thought it was going to be.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
Yes, that's an understatement. A lot of things going on is going to be on his tombstone.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
Yes. And but to be clear, as as as many of the issues that that Charlie faces, I do think he'd be a better president. I don't know that it's fair to to completely lump the two of them together. No. The thing I was pointing out was that that at the time when I made that comment, Charlie was still just going off and saying whatever stupid tiger blood. comment he was making.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And, you know, we Trump has always been comfortable with saying whatever stupid thing he said, because most people sort of wrote him off as as harmless and didn't hold him responsible for those things. And I think part of his allure to the people who like him is that he says whatever stupid thing he's thinking, you know, they say, well, you know, that's that's him being authentic.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
But, you know, he he And I've always... He's that old guy at the end of the bar who thinks he knows how the world should work. But he's really kind of a loser. And unfortunately, people bought into the mythos that that we created in the entertainment business through Art of the Deal, which was ghostwritten by a guy named Tony Schwartz. You know, Trump didn't write it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
He didn't write any of the books. You know, The Apprentice was, you know, they had to work so hard to make him look like a billionaire on The Apprentice. They had to, you know, that boardroom was a set because the real Trump Tower looked so cheesy. You know, it was common knowledge in the business that he was not a particularly successful real estate magnate, but he was a fun character.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And that character has really stuck with people for all these years. There's still people who are surprised that he doesn't actually have a lot of business acumen.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
i would love talking about this show because it's been like the last six years of my life uh it's an incredible story but we didn't mean for it to be relevant um that that the story ends up having being about a family surviving their country falling to authoritarianism wasn't supposed to be relevant when we started this story um uh but unfortunately events uh transpired uh no what happened was the way the story came about is uh suzanne rico a friend of mine and a friend of my wife's
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
sort of blithely mentioned at a dinner party once that her grandfather was one of Hitler's most important scientists. I was like, wait a minute, I'm sorry, that's not dinner party conversation. You're gonna have to back up and tell me this story.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And it turns out she had been, her mother had died recently and her mother on her deathbed had admitted that she had written a memoir, but she wouldn't be able to finish it. And she wanted Suzanne to finish it for her. And Suzanne was a journalist. She was an anchor woman here at the CBS affiliate here in Los Angeles.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And so Suzanne spent an enormous amount of her life spent the last six years of her life researching her family's history and found this this dark mystery sort of at the at the heart of it, which was that her grandfather, who was this genius aircraft designer who never had personal bigotry towards any anybody in particular, never, never had impulses towards authoritarian rule.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
became incredibly important to Adolf Hitler and did some horrifying things in the service of the Third Reich. But at the end of the war, his wife was killed in a mysterious bombing. So Suzanne just took it upon herself to solve the bombing.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
and find out who did it and why and um and she made a podcast about it that's one of the most amazing things that i've ever listened to and it's been lovely to be a part of it
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
well i i'm grateful um that we that we as a country have been around a lot longer than the the weimar republic germany um they didn't have constitutional traditions and uh institutions built up the way that we do so we have some real so it's not a perfect metaphor um but whenever authoritarianism is coming to your country and it can come to any
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
you know, it has a few elements that are in common, some that are shockingly in common. Like the other day, that thing came out about the Trump administration trying to promote women having babies and coming up with trophies for women having babies. Well, Hitler did that. And in fact, Suzanne's grandmother got one of those medals for having babies.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
So, you know, history doesn't always repeat, but it certainly rhymes. And the big takeaway for me was watching this man and his family have to adapt to the slow changes in their country at first. And Hitler did fascinating things. He made it easy. He just made it he put small impediments in front of people at first in terms of how they were going to live their lives.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And slowly it forced people to change their lives, to adapt to him. And and it just it was it was easier to become a Nazi. And to be and to to, you know, it wasn't clear, you know, Hitler wasn't Hitler until he was, you know, we we we feel like, oh, that guy was obviously evil day one, you know, but it's like, no, it didn't. You know, he just seemed like a guy who loved Germany.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
you know uh and uh uh you know he had a he had a coup that didn't quite work uh but he went to jail and and made so many uh speeches that were so beautiful and and and and got people so excited about being german again that uh that uh he came out of jail more powerful than he'd been before And everybody said, well, at least that guy really loves Germany, you know.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
But but again, it's it's you know, you you see these things and you go, oh, you know, I would love to think that I'd be really brave in times like that. And I would love to think so. But it's really hard. They make it really hard and they make the consequences so much worse than just just going along with it. You know, and that's why so many people did it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
Absolutely. I think there are important differences. You know, obviously, we have... better traditions of democracy, but much longer held institutions. And, you know, like I said, it's only been three months. You know, it takes a while for a real understanding of what's happening to filter down to everybody. I mean, you know, obviously we have the internet and people like you and I are, you know,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
keeping track of everything that's happening on a daily basis. But the vast majority of Americans just aren't. They want to live their lives and there's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely. But I think everybody's slowly coming around to realize, oh, this guy does not actually know what he's doing. He's actually pretty malevolent. He's actually he's hurting a lot of people and will.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
And if these doge cuts are allowed to stand, the the the damage will be catastrophic to public health, to programs, to, you know, poverty in the United States. So, you know, it's gonna take a little while. It's gonna take a while, but I do believe that people are starting to fight back. People are starting to understand how to fight back.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Jon Cryer on Trump’s Disaster Presidency
I believe it's going to take a a people power style movement, a nonviolent people power movement that is that is going to protest. It's going to take large demonstrations. But we've even got the conservative commentators calling for mass for general strikes. So clearly it is starting to filter down to people that something has gone gravely wrong here.