Director Rob Reiner said Sunday on MSNBC that in order to win in 2020, Democrats have to “punch” President Donald Trump in the nose.
Reiner said, “When you’ve got a schoolyard bully, you got to punch them in the nose, and you got to continue to punch him in the nose. I mean, you know, we can’t be, you know, liars the way he is. He is a continual liar, and if we adopt that, then we become him. So we have to find another way do it, and we have to start thinking about this as — it is like what James Carville said back in 1992, then it was the economy stupid, now it is Trump stupid. And so everything has to be designed to go after him. And so the candidates who don’t have a dime’s worth of difference when it comes to policy, to see debates where they are arguing about who has the best health care plan back and forth, that is not what will get it done.”
He continued, “What will get it done is somebody that stands up to him every day and punch him in the nose. That will take power. It will take money. And so far, I hate to say it Bloomberg is the only one doing that, and the only one that has the kind of money that it will take. He can spend twice as much money as Trump, and he can stand on the stage, and if trump calls him short, he can say, well, you’re fat. I mean, that is what it will take. You have to fight a schoolyard bully. You have to punch him in the nose. You can’t go around nibbling at the edges with policy issues.”
He added, “He had the perfect line when he said what would you feel about, you know if you got the nomination and you have two billionaires going after each other, he said, ‘who is the second one?’ And that is what it will take. It will take a guy who can go right back at him, who has no fear that he can do anything. All these Republicans running around frightened to death that something will happen. We’re not going to get those people. Those people are gone. This is going to be a turnout election. We’ll have to get behind whoever is the nominee and that person better stand on that stage. And when Trump invades your personal space the way he did with Hillary, you have to turn around and say get away from me, pal. Get back to your corner. You don’t belong here. Somebody has to say that to him. They have to smack him in the nose and smack him hard. The guy is a liar, a racist, and he is a cheat. So we have to be very tough with him. We don’t have to put on a reality show, but we have to punch him in the nose.”
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