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- [00:00]
John
I'm seeing a lot of messages like this from business owners who, for whatever reason, supported Donald Trump in the election. This is from Craig Fuller, who runs something called Freight Affiliated Media. They do market intelligence for freight related services. He goes, I enthusiastically supported Trump's victory in the November election. I thought I was voting for a pro business policies and small targeted incremental tariffs. I did not vote for a neutron bomb to wipe out supply chains and small businesses 100 days in or Azalea Banks musician who said, okay, I think it's time everyone who voted for Trump admit that we made an effing mess here. Like, this is an absolute disaster. And this was after she bragged about voting for Trump following the election. You know, and then there's just things every day that just makes you, I guess, scratch your head is an understatement. Like this. Putin gifted Donald Trump a portrait of himself raising his fist after the Butler, Pennsylvania incident. And Witkoff, Donald Trump's special envoy to Russia, said how touched Donald Trump was by the painting commissioned by Vladimir Putin. But look, I think the business community is getting it right now. The front page of the New York magazine was this cartoon right here, political cartoon. I did not think for one second he was going to go this crazy. As all the Wall street bankers see the market imploding as the US economy is now behaving like that of a developing country. We're seeing op EDS written by conservative economists talking about that. And then just the message boards you look at from the conservative message boards, and it's all people saying, I'm not too proud to admit it, but I feel stupid. Now. I want to bring in friend of the show, Jon Cryer, your Midas Touch fan, which is great. The producer of the podcast the man who Calculated Death, which I want to talk about as well, because it focuses on the scientist who built the first cruise missile for Adolf Hitler. And these times are not too dissimilar from those times. But first off, welcome to the show and what do you make of this mess?
- [02:14]
Jon Cryer
John, thank you so much. 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 to a. This is supposed to be a honeymoon. This is supposed to be Trump's honeymoon. Trump's honeymoon is very bumpy so far. And, you know, a lot of the sort of more cultish aspects of Trumpism will be much, much harder to dislodge from people because once 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. You know, as supposedly Mark Twain said that it's much easier to, to con somebody than to, to convince them that they've been conned.
- [03:05]
John
John, what's your overall assessment of just what's taken place, just you personally, in the past 100 days? Worse than expected. Is this what you expected that he was going to do? How do you try to, you know, speak about this or come to some understanding of what the hell's going on?
- [03:23]
Jon Cryer
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, that it won't be tanks on every corner. He'll be turning the United States into an authoritarian state through fear. 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. 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. You know, we created this image of this billionaire, brilliant guy, and it was never him. He was always kind of a moron. He still doesn't understand what tariffs, 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. 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.
- [05:15]
John
You know, I think you once made a statement saying that Donald Trump is almost like a Charlie Sheen of politics. And you said, look, I, there's charismatic aspects of Charlie Sheen. I liked working with the guy, but, you know, there was a lot of other things going on, you know, there as well.
- [05:30]
Jon Cryer
A lot. Yes. That's an understatement. A lot of things going on is going to be on his tombstone.
- [05:37]
John
We're not going to go into that. But, you know, this malignant, narcissistic profile, you know, this personality of somebody who's able to. I think one of the words, the things you said is like, just totally full of shit. Like someone who could be totally full of shit, but who can convince people of things to just do things against their interest over and over and over again. I mean, and. And you see that he talk about the cult aspect of it. So, I don't know, maybe speak to that. Because in the entertainment industry, you see these charismatic personalities who are able to get people to do things against their interest frequently.
- [06:18]
Jon Cryer
Yes, but to be clear, as many of the issues that Charlie faces, I do think he'd be a better president. I don't know that it's fair to completely lump the two of them together. No, the thing I was pointing out was 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. And Trump has always been comfortable with saying whatever stupid thing he said because most people sort of wrote him off 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, they say, well, that's him being authentic. But, you know, 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, you know, and, you know, unfortunately, people bought into the mythos that we created in the entertainment business through art of the Deal, which was ghost, written by a guy named Tony Schwartz. You know, Trump didn't write it. 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. 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.
- [08:06]
John
John, why Do I think the headline coming out of this interview is going to be John Cryer, Charlie Sheen would make a much better president than Donald Trump by far. Let's pivot, though, to talk about your podcast and your podcast in general. The most recent one you produced is the man who Calculated Death. You're focused on a scientist who built the first cruise missile for Adolf Hitler. It then kind of goes into this murder mystery aspect as well. But this. This is your focus right now, focusing on, you know, I think these historical parallels to this moment, approaching it, you know, from this almost true crime lens to also shed light on the modern moment through these historical experiences. Can you talk about this show?
- [08:55]
Jon Cryer
I would love talking about this show because it's been like the last six years of my life. It's an incredible story, but we didn't mean for it to be relevant. That the story ends up being about a family surviving their country, falling to authoritarianism wasn't supposed to be relevant when we started this story, but unfortunately, events transpired. No, what happened was the way this story came about is Suzanne Rico, a friend of mine and a friend of my wife's, 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. And 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. And so Suzanne spent an enormous amount of her life. She spent the last six years of her life researching her family's history and found this dark mystery sort of at the heart of it, which was that her grandfather, who was this genius aircraft designer who never had personal bigotry towards anybody in particular, never, never had impulses towards authoritarian rule, 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 and find out who did it and why, and she made a podcast about it. That's one of the most amazing things that I've ever listened to listen to, and it's been lovely to be a part of it.
- [10:58]
John
We all have decisions to make in these moments, you know, you're seeing universities bend the knee, you're seeing universities stand up, you're seeing law firms bend the knee, you're seeing law firms stand up, you're seeing Hollywood studios bend the knee, you're seeing Hollywood studios stand up. How do you process this moment where courage is needed? But as you go into, in the man who Calculated Death, the fear is real and palpable, and people are reacting to it differently. But ultimately, you know, in my view, history is going to judge where you are in these moments, and you can't ever bend the knee. You can't obey in advance. But how do you think about that?
- [11:44]
Jon Cryer
Well, I'm grateful that we as a country have been around a lot longer than the Weimar Republic, Germany. They didn't have constitutional traditions and institutions built up the way that we do. So we have some real. So it's not a perfect metaphor, but whenever authoritarianism is coming to your country, and it can come to any, you know, it has a, 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, the Trump administration trying to, 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. So, you know, history isn't always, 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. 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, you know, it wasn't clear, you know, Hitler wasn't Hitler until he was, you know, 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, you know, and, you know, he had a, he had a coup that didn't quite work, but he went to jail and made so many speeches that were so beautiful and got people so excited about being German again that 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. But again, it's, you know, you see these things and you go, oh, you know, I would love to think that I'd be, you know, 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 going along with it. And that's why so many people did it finally.
- [14:26]
John
Do you see signs of hope right now, though? And you talk about how in the Weimar Republic it was short lived and ultimately defeated in the war. And we looked back on that as one of the most atrocious, if not the most atrocious thing in human history. There does seem to be right now, at least an understanding of the historical lesson by many. We're seeing the protests, we're seeing signs of great opposition. I interviewed earlier the head of the aclu, for example, who's working with all these groups that have coordinated a 50 state legal strategy. You're seeing federal courts not just giving in right away, although some bad rulings and some really bad rulings for sure. But there are signs of hope. Let's leave on an optimistic note. What do you think about that?
- [15:19]
Jon Cryer
Absolutely. I think there are important differences. Obviously we have better traditions of democracy, but much longer held institutions. And like I said, it's only been three months. It takes a while for 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, 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. And if these doge cuts are allowed to stand, the damage will be catastrophic to public health, to programs, to poverty in the United States. So it's going to take a little while. It's going to take a while. But I do believe that people are starting to fight back. People are starting to understand how to fight back. I believe it's going to take a people power style movement, a nonviolent people power movement that is going to protest. It's going to take large demonstrations, but we've even got conservative commentators calling for general strikes. So clearly it is starting to filter down to people that something has gone gravely wrong here.
- [16:52]
John
Jon Cryer, one of my favorite shows, Two and a Half Men, but great podcast right now, and everybody should check it out. The man who Calculated Death. Just, it's beautifully produced as well. You bring in a lot of elements, and it's. It's really great. The man who Calculated Death. Check it out. John Cryer. Appreciate you.
- [17:12]
Jon Cryer
Thank you so much, man.
- [17:13]
John
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