The Chris Cuomo Project - Alec Baldwin, FBI Mar-A-Lago Search

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

This week on The Chris Cuomo Project, Chris explores the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Alec Baldwin, actor and activist, joins Chris to discuss what happened on the set of “Rust,” the current media culture, and his stubborn attachment to the Democratic Party. Subscribe and follow The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I have to say, thank you once again. This is only growing as proof of concept because of you. You're spreading the word. Please continue to do so. Each one help one, right? My free agent brothers and sisters. And that's what this is about.

People with open hearts, open minds, willing to listen. Maybe if you disagree with somebody, maybe they have it wrong. Maybe you do. That's what the project is all about. So keep subscribing, spreading the word. The growth is what we're all about. So keep subscribing, spreading the word. The growth is what we're all about. And I appreciate you for that.

The free agent merch. It's moving well, but I want more because I want to get this group of money together that we collectively can figure out who deserves it, who to give it to. All right, so free agent merch. You'll see the link. You can go to chriscuomo.com and get it there. We're also

starting to bank the other episodes of the podcast there. And that's that. Once we start in the fall at News Nation, then we're going to have another outlet to expand and start discussing what matters in the news with that cable outlet and really have a home for free agents where you don't have to worry about type or tribe or party, you know, kind of corrupting the entire discussion. That's what the Chris Cuomo project is all about. And today we're getting lucky again. We've got Alec Baldwin as the guest. Why is that lucky? Well, because he's got these new reports out that the story about how the gun went off, that Baldwin's reckoning that he didn't pull the

trigger does not square with an FBI investigation's findings. Is that true? Is it fair? Have you ever heard his actual explanation? It didn't come out really in that ABC News interview, but it will now. And we're also going to hear the actor and political activist defend not just what happened on the set of Rust, but what's happening with our media culture. And within his own party, the Democrats, his stubborn attachment to their cause. Now, why do I say it that way? Because you're anti-Democrat. You've gone bad on the left.

I was never good on the left. And this isn't about attacking anybody for me. It's about being sick of the two-party system because of the games that are played, because of how it's been reduced to who is worse. And you know it because you see it. That's what bothers me, okay? And I see it everywhere. It's like Neo in The Matrix, when all he starts to see is the code. That's how I feel about our political state of play. And my point is to explain why it matters and why we should have hope that we can get to a better place, even when we see things that we don't like. In fact, especially when we do. See the game, change the game. Right now,

we're living an egregious example of this. You had one half of the game, the right side in this instance, outraged by the execution of a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago. They called it a raid. They said that it was a new low in terms of a lack of respect for the presidency, that it was the Democrats showing how they were weaponizing the law for their own political aims. That's heavy stuff. And it resonates. It lands, right? Because we are suspicious of that now.

All these different hearings. And it seems like the law and political expedience and who's investigating whom, it's true. And that makes your eyes pop open, your ears perk up. But was it fair here? eyes pop open, your ears perk up. But was it fair here? Now, the Democrats did themselves no favors by not reminding that the FBI is led by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee. So now he's in bed with the Democrats? Come on. Merrick Garland at the DOJ, hey, either you drive the narrative or you are driven by the narrative. And they did not get out and explain the basis for this soon enough. The Democrats have a problem with this. They do not tell their own story well

enough. They often step on their own successes. Now, what will that mean in the elections? We'll see. Now, what do the facts tell us? Well, as a matter of fact, there was no raid. They didn't go in there guns blazing. In fact, if anything, they did do this differently and not in a good way. You would not have been dealt with by the FBI the way former President Trump was. Now, I personally, I get it. A former president is not the same as me or you. It does mean something to hold that kind of powerful position. You will be treated differently. There will be excesses in your favor. They've got Secret Service, right?

We protect them. We value them. Not that we don't value you or we don't value me, but they were more gentle in this situation. It was no raid. It was no raid. They didn't go in guns blazing. They didn't even wear their FBI jackets. They made multiple appeals to get back this classified top secret or even more top secret than top secret, whatever that means, voluntarily.

Then they did the subpoena. Trump and his lawyers decided to ignore it. If anything, that is a move to cheapen the legitimacy of law in the interest of political expedience. So only when all of that failed did it get to this point. And now we know there was a judge it was signed off on. And now we know even more so that after they did the searching, they got these catalogs of boxes and boxes of all this sensitive stuff that no one can explain why it was ever taken and put at Mar-a-Lago. The former president says he wants to take down the temperature. Otherwise, terrible things are going to happen.

Well, your people and you called this a raid. You pretended it was so wrong. Now the facts show that you were in the wrong. disarrayed. You pretended it was so wrong. Now the facts show that you were in the wrong. So if you want to take down the temperature, why don't you say why these things are on your property? Why are they there? Well, I can declassify. Yeah, it doesn't mean you did. So what is the explanation? Where are all of his supporters, the ones who were up in arms about how wrong this search was? Why aren't you asking these questions? If you don't want to be blamed for being a part of what's wrong, then why aren't you asking what's right in this situation?

Push for an explanation of the documents and their presence in that location. Where are those people? You want us to believe you're acting in good faith, then act in good faith. Ask those people. You want us to believe you're acting in good faith, then act in good faith. Ask those questions. Otherwise, you should be condemned as just being a part of the game and just supporting your team, no matter what it means about our collective confidence in the FBI or the administration of justice. It's just about advantage for you. And that's wrong, no matter what your party. Okay? You need to see that as a free agent and you need to be sickened by it as a free agent

so that we can get the collective resolve as free agents to change it and change it now. Now, a step back about how I see this and maybe it will appeal to you. Let me know, please. There's an expression, you may have heard it, called amor fati, A-M-O-R-F-A-T-I. It's Latin. The literal translation is like the love of fate, but the Stoics, you'll hear me talk about them a lot. It really is a substitute for what many

of you rely on as religion in my own life. These are the rules. These are the principles. These are the parameters that I try to live by. I fail all the time. It is staggering to me how often I repeat mistakes. I am flawed first. Like that is the first word. If I had to describe myself, well, I'm flawed. I'm always making mistakes. I'm trying to get better. Now, this is fundamental to that process for me, okay? So the Stoics used Amor Fati to teach a lesson about having to love everything that happens in life. As someone who just had some decidedly shitty stuff happen to and around me, the idea that I have to love it all is absurd. And yet, it's not that you have to enjoy it, you have to like it,

but you do have to figure out how to use everything that happens. Someone once said that you will discover your fate on the road you take to avoid it. Now, I'm not a big believer in fate or destiny or even luck. And I don't think that everything happens for a reason as a result of that. I do think it is much more likely and true that there is a responsibility on you and on me to find a reason for and in everything that does happen. And in that way, figure out what we can do to respond to all that happens to us and through us. So if something good happens, well, how do you magnify it? How do you multiply its effects so that it

happens again? Now, most often in life, I don't know about you, but for me, I don't do that. I often see my own life as a series of failures averted. Now, that's not healthy. And I work on that in therapy and on my own to try to figure out how to be better than that. It's too negative. It's too focused on the negative. Now, when good things do happen to me, often it makes me more likely to ignore the lessons of that experience because I'm just happy about the outcome. Now, when something bad happens, I start thinking about why a lot more and what can be learned and what can I do to improve my situation so that it doesn't happen again. Now, you may not do that. You may be someone who decides

to just go down with the ship. I am not that kind of person. I was not raised by those kinds of people. I don't want to be that kind of example for my kids. So I have resolved to look at problems and controversies and try to find a value in them. If nothing else, to find a way that they could be avoided, how we could be better, to understand them and maybe do something about making the situation better. That's what the Chris Cuomo project is about. That's what I want for you and for me. And we're going to do that now with Alec Baldwin. We're going to listen to him and try to understand and test his answers

to figure out, well, what is he responsible for and not responsible for in this tragedy that occurred on the set of the movie Rust. But more importantly, let's get to his ideas because he's an influencer in our culture and in our politics. So let's have a real conversation right now with Alec Baldwin. Let's get after him. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70.

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and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo. It's embarrassing, and it's all online. HIMSS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right from your couch.

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You'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, the price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. How much wellness is there in your life? Are you well? No, I think that I'm inherently unwell. You look good. You always look good. But on the inside, when you got no job, if you're not tan and you have no job, you're making a big mistake. You look good. You always look good. But on the inside, when you got no job, if you're not tan and you have no job, you're making a big mistake. You're doing something wrong. Look, I try. I mean, most of my life take twice in just about every regard is staggering. So, you know, the older I get, the more open I am to having screwed up and trying to figure out a

better way, you know, whether what's being done is fair or not. And, you know, one of the things I've really identified with you recently is the idea of just because it's not fair doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with it. That is a lesson that probably means something new to you, I would assume. I interviewed Ken Oletta from my podcast just now. We were talking about how journalism has changed. And a quick intro to this is I'm at a party out here a few years ago, and Hugh Jackman is there having just played Gary Hart in a film. And I pull out of my notes section of my phone this article by Matt By of the Times, and

Jackman gasps because the article is about Gary Hart. And he says, if Nixon's resignation created the character culture in American politics, then Hart's undoing marked the moment when political reporters ceased to care about almost anything else. By the 1990s, the cardinal objective of all political journalism had shifted from a focus on agendas to a focus on narrow notions of character, from illuminating worldviews to exposing falsehoods. If post-Hart political journalism had a motto, it would be, we know you're a fraud somehow, our job is to prove it and i live by that now which is like i mean

you know i i i mean doing this with you is a miracle i don't want to talk to anybody anymore you know i just everything is surface area to be condemned and canceled again you know um yes i get matt's point he's not wrong even though there's a brush of cynicism and a brush of generalism, right? It's not everybody, but there can be groupthink in it. And I don't even know that it's character analysis anymore. I just think it's what we call gotcha culture because it works so well. It allows in a binary process, you know, any opposition. It allows me to take you out without having to do anything about myself. Just bring you down.

It doesn't have to be about character. It can be about anything. And it can be because people are getting or were getting a satisfaction out of it that I don't know that it exists anymore. I do believe that there's a huge appetite for change, that what used to be called the silent majority exists once again in this population that I call free agents, people who are open-minded, who don't have these conversations that they see on cable TV.

You know, the people who come up to you where we live and talk politics with you, even though they know that you can be a fire-breathing lefty. They talk to you about things and they relate to you as a member of their community. And I think people want a lot more of that. I see a lot of it in your situation. The people who have been trying to destroy you for the last year for the horrible events that happened at Rust, it's as much about just taking you down once and for all as it is what happened on set, no? The reality for me, and all I can really say about that, is that everybody's waiting for a sheriff's report. The DA is not bound by that report. The DA can bring charges or not bring charges, regardless of what the report says, but everyone must wait for that report. So while we

wait ad nauseum for that report, and I have a lot of information about that, which we're going to postpone until the report comes out. But while we're waiting for that, I know that every single person on the set of the film knows what happened. And the people that are talking loudest about what happened or speculating about what happened were not on the set of the film. The LA Times, the Hollywood Reporter. They talk on and on and on about what if this and what if that and have dined out on this. The thing that they have in common is nobody was there. And everybody who was there, they know exactly what happened. They know exactly who was to blame, blah, blah, blah. Well, look, you know, I go back and forth about how helpful fact analysis is for people in any kind of judgment situation

outside of a courtroom, obviously, where you only know what you can show. There's a standard. There's, due process means something there. In larger society, I don't know what it means. It's all so inherently subjective. I have one question that, if you don't feel that you can clear it up now,

you should at some point in the future. But then I want to talk to you about just processing and coping and enduring through this situation. The fact question is, in an earlier interview, you said, I didn't pull the trigger. And there's all this stage direction about the hammer, which is obviously a part of a revolver that people can look up for themselves, but that you pulled it back as the scene was directed for you to do. You say you never pulled the trigger, but the gun went off. You do the ABC interview, and it was kind of left there. That will not make sense to people. If a bullet comes out of a gun, they say, well, then someone fired it. You're familiar with this did not come from me. This came from the DA's office themselves. You're familiar with what fanning a gun is. Have you heard of that phrase fanning a gun?

Yes, but explain it. So if you pull the hammer back and you don't lock the hammer, if you pull the hammer back pretty far in old Western movies, you'd see someone fan the hammer of the gun. The hammer didn't lock. You pulled it back to an extent where it would fire the bullet without you pulling the trigger, without you locking the hammer. The man who's the principal safety officer

on the set of the film declared that the gun was safe when he handed it to me. The person who was the principal safety officer of the film declared in front of the entire assemblage, this is a cold gun. Now, why did he say that? If he didn't know, if he hadn't checked. The point is, all of us were told that everything

was cool and you can relax and we're working with a gun that's safe to rehearse with. But he explained it to me effectively, that that's exactly what can happen if you pull a hammer back and let it go. If there's a live round. see, there's only one question to ask here. Who put a live round in the gun? That's it. There is no other question to ask. Do you have any suspicion that this could have been a setup? No, no. I think that in the beginning for me, there was a discussion about what was likely. Everybody focused on what's likely. Someone was responsible for a horrible accident. And then as time went on, I began to entertain because of the insistence of the people involved. And again, I don't want to get into this detail now, but of the insistence of certain people

that something else was afoot here, I was open-minded to that for a couple of months and was willing to explore those possibilities for a couple of months. And then after exhausting that possibility, private investigators, things that were information we access, we come back to what is likely. What is likely is that somebody who was responsible for one situation or one line of responsibility and the other person, like a tandem of the two people, One of them or both was negligent. But you believe for your own head in processing how this became your life, you don't think anybody was trying to put you in a situation where something terrible was going to happen. That requires so much. I mean, I am somebody who is perfectly comfortable with conspiracy theories that people want to get rid of.

comfortable with conspiracy theories that people want to get rid of. You're talking to the guy who, when I had a show on MSNBC, I did a two-hour, four-part memorial that was going to air literally. And it aired literally. It was scheduled to air on Friday, November 22, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's murder. And I had a feeble and very old, but nonetheless lucid Mark Lane on the show. I had Jim Douglas, who wrote JFK and the Unspeakable. I had the guy whose last name is on the tip of my tongue, who wrote the New York Times bestseller

about, he was a New York Times reporter about the Warren Commission. And I had Bobby Kennedy Jr. come on, and he was the first member of the Kennedy family to say on the air that his family believed the Zapruder film was doctored. I had a two-hour, four-part program all about the conspiracy aspects of JFK's assassination, and NBC killed it. My producer at MSNBC told me that the mothership across the street, NBC News, does not tolerate, They completely support that Oswald is the killer, and they refuse to disseminate any information that questions that theory. Oswald was the lone killer, and they don't want to hear one. And they canceled my show. you know, bowl of oatmeal with the boots in the reverse and the stirrups and JFK Jr. saluting and just a very, you know, sappy commemorative program.

But it led you to believe that there could be an alternative explanation. Oh, well, I mean, when I was a kid, back in a time when journalism was still controlled in certain powers and influenced by certain powers, but nowhere near what it is now. I went to a 7-Eleven as a boy and on a spinning rack of magazines was a journal about JFK's assassination. It could have been based on Robert Sam Anson's book, They've Killed the President. And in it, they had Oswald's autopsy photos.

I mean, this was at a 7-Eleven in Massapequa, Long Island in 1960-something when I was like 10 years old. Sometimes, not always, you look at something and you say, it looks that way because it is that way. It's very common sense. And to me, Kennedy's assassination

is a very common sense thing. There's no way Oswald squeezed off three shots and had two hits from that window. It's out of the question. So back to you. Anyway, back to you for a second, and we'll go on. When you did the interview with ABC, we have a lot of friends in common and family. I was not in favor of you doing it because I thought it was too soon and you were going to get beat up for it. That happened to a certain extent. But I think the bigger concern and what I want to know for this audience is, were your lawyers saying to you, even if this is ruled an accident and everybody who's in power acknowledges that Alec Baldwin had no criminal responsibility for this tragic death. But you are a producer on the film,

and something can be an accident that is held as a liability of the producers, and you are one. It depends on what grade of producer you are. There are managerial producers who raise the money and spend the money and hire people, and there are creative producers who come in, and the only authorities they have are over script casting.

That's the category I fall into. But you're getting sued just the same. Well, the production's getting sued, and I'm one of the five producers that is named in the lawsuit. And we're all indemnified by an insurance policy. There's a lot I can say about that in terms of who did what to try to craft settlements. There's a very complex web of stuff that was going on in the months

after that. My impulse was, I mean, if you want to say something about me, that's true. I'm not going to stop someone from doing that. You know what I mean? I'm not going to complain about that.

If I earned it like this guy that said, I punched him over a parking space in front of my building and there's six cameras in front of my building and all of them refuted everything he said, you know? So we made that go away because he lied. The guy lied. And we had it on film that he lied. But again, like people much more than I was prepared to accept, people want money. They want money. Well, and they want to go after you, especially the New York Post. But just to button this up, and then I want to move on. The idea is that you believe that as a producer, you're not going to have any liability because you're a different type of producer than other producers who are on the film. No, that's a fact. I mean, there are people who are managerial

producers. They're responsible for who gets hired, who doesn't get hired. You know, I mean, for example, the person who was the principal, what they call the armorer mentor, this guy, Seth Kenney, he completely endorsed her being hired as the armorer. You know, no one came to the production, even though this doesn't pertain to me and my responsibilities, nobody came to the production and said, don't hire her. She was hired. She's in a union. There was no complaint. No one came to the producers and said, the her she was hired she's in a union there was no complaint

no one came to the producers and said the producers are blameless for that i will say even though i have my issues with them the producers are not people who were warned not to hire do you think that the producers had reason to know that there were screwed up things happening on that set that there could be danger no that's a much more involved question that I don't want to get into now, again, because it speaks to some of the issues I'm going to address later on. But the bottom line is that there are people I spoke to who I admire and respect.

And I said to them, did you think that this was an unsafe set? And they said, no. And I had no experience myself when I was there that it was an unsafe set ever. Until that moment, until that day that happened, when someone handed me a prop weapon and told me this is safe to use, they made that declaration. Now, in the world of alternatives, what might have happened if he never said anything?

But that's not the case. More in line with the way we live our lives right now, no one's following them around with a camera all day, are they? Right. No one's following the armorer or the first AD around with a camera all day long saying, well, what happened? What happened? What happened? Well, arguably, the reason this has taken so long to reach a legal conclusion on the responsibility side, liability, civil litigation is something else. It's often more protracted. I think if it's not Alec Baldwin involved, we get answers sooner. Well, all of that remains to be seen.

There's nothing, I mean, the fact that this has taken so long has been quite, quite troublesome to me. And we're going to address that as well. I mean, listen, if you make an announcement, this was made clear to me by my lawyer, if you make an announcement that you want them to step on the gas and hurry things up, that's only going to slow them down. DAs and prosecutors don't want to be told by people who are potentially the subject of their investigation what to do.

I mean, my lawyer said to me, if you prod them, if you push them, if you go public and say, what the fuck is the problem here, then that's not going to help you at all. So I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. And then the announcement is going to come about who is or isn't going to be charged. I mean, I have a lot of opinions about that, but let me just say this, which is that we come down to a point where it's just like, it doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter what you do. Now, this is something which was something that was to the delight of people who hate my guts politically. Trump went on TV and said, he thinks I did it on purpose. I wouldn't rule it out, he said, if he did it on purpose. His son made t-shirts that they sold on a website. You call that surreal. How is it surreal?

It's absolutely our reality. I can't believe you were surprised that he didn't take the opportunity. I've been cured of that observation. This was this wonderful opportunity for these people to, like in my case, you're not going to find any child pornography on my computer. The things that they really, that they're hunting for, that they want, that they're desperate for, you know, in the United States, obviously sexual scandal overwhelms everything. They love that here.

They love to condemn people for that and so forth. But what I realize is that, as I've said in the past, if George Bush's mother, if Barbara Bush fell through the ice on a pond and I waded out into the pond and saved her life, they'd say I groped her sexually when I was pulling her out of the ice. I groped her. I squeezed her breasts while I was pulling her out of the ice pod. First of all, thank you for that image. Second, would that be before or after you pushed her through the ice in the pod? Well, then you're more wise than I'll ever be. But my point is, it doesn't matter what you do. The ones that are out to get you are out to get

you. And in this case, not even so much that kind of trash press. I mean, anything Murdoch and anything Post. I mean, who? I used to think that the Post was something that cops and firemen and doormen read for the sports page, because let's face it, the Post has a pretty good sports page. And all the rest of that vomit that constitutes the Post, I thought, who reads this? But I was surprised to learn some of the people over the years who read the Post. Especially now that it's all digital. But look, all of this aside, and I do want to talk about a little bit more in terms of how quickly you returned to your public life in terms of taking on tough issues and making yourself a target. But, you know, when I reached out at the time,

I felt so horribly about what you and the family and obviously the filmmaker who lost her life, that processing and that pain. I felt so badly for you and for everybody involved. How hard has this been for you and Ilaria and the older kids? What you hit on is the most important thing. And I'm not just saying this to be polite or what have you or to dress this up a certain way is everyone that was there that day walked around confused confusion was what reigned that day because what happened and what actually we learned happened was just not even in the realm of possibility. It wasn't even possible. We thought somebody fainted,

we thought whatever. So to focus on one thing, which is the real tragedy, I'm not the victim here. No matter how much people say, or the post and this, that I'm not the victim here. Things for me are going to get better. Things for me are going to get cleared up. I'm a thousand percent confident about that. And nothing's going to bring this woman back. She died. She has a little boy. You know, I have a whole raft of comments about that later on. But the idea being that this is the real tragedy. And when you turn around to me, the only significant thing, everything we've said doesn't matter.

Me, my positioning, the press, my wanting to reach out to an audience and say, I hope you understand how this works, that there were safety protocols. Why would anybody believe that I worked in this business for 40 years, and that day I decided to play with a gun? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. All behavior is consistent. I've worked in this business for years, and with cars, stunts, weaponry, whatever, I've never had one incident. If there was a title of a chapter of a book, it would be called Without Incident. I never had one

problem in all of my years of making movies. And especially when I was younger, running down the tarmac with a gun in my hand or in a car. Now, my point is, is that the real tragedy here is what happened to this woman. And even though this is one in a billion, they had two laws in front of the California Assembly that were both voted down. And the one law, I spoke to the state assemblyman who said the MPAA was responsible for this because they don't want to take guns out of movies. I can't believe that, by the way. I was shocked to learn that you guys are still using real weapons with blanks.

But I don't want you to, I get it. You don't consider yourself a victim in this. I totally get that. And yes, some have suggested that you are trying to put yourself that way. I don't believe that. And I know that that's the truth. But, you know, you said in the interview,

George asked you, Stephanopoulos, this has to be the worst thing that ever happened to you. And you said, yes. But how do you handle that? I handle it because I had a very supporting spouse. I had a wife. I mean, sometimes you stop and you think the way that social media is and the way that the culture is in media, because I have a theory about that. My theory is that because there's such a disconnect between politics, elected officials, government, and the average person, because you realize that they come courting your support

at election time, then go off and do exactly what their funders want them to do. All politicians are bought and owned by the people who put them in office financially. And so what you as the average voter, they want their vote, they want their opinion and their vote to count somewhere where it doesn't count in political exchange. And this is where their vote counts. Cancel culture, ending your career,

saying things that will have some impact. They have no impact. How many laws are passed, state, municipal, federal, that really, really benefit the greatest number of people? It's all lobbying by powerful people. It's all lobbying by the government is for sale. The government of this country is for sale. And where people want their opinion to count is where you have the emergence of cancel culture. Now, I have to say, okay, you are a big time Democrat and a lefty. But right now, you are saying exactly what my friends who reject the right and the left, who consider themselves free agents or sometimes independents, although I don't like that word.

consider themselves free agents or sometimes independents, although I don't like that word. If you believe all these things, why don't you have more common ground with people who aren't in the Democratic Party? And why are you a Democrat if you believe that they're part of a system that's basically a kleptocracy? Because I've been anesthetized in recent years into believing what the Democrats have said, which is that, and they're right, which is how much worse it would be if the Republicans are in power. I mean, I'm somebody who believes that we need to have term limits. And I've been a huge proponent and I've worked for many, many years going back to the 90s about campaign finance reform. And I've always wanted there to be, and it's obviously Citizens United put their most recent stake in the heart of that. But I have been working on behalf of campaign finance reform in the state of Arizona, in the state of Massachusetts, in the state of Maine, New York City campaign finance reform for many, many years.

And you realize that without campaign finance reform, incumbency is a problem because the person with the most money wins. People say elections themselves are term limits. Well, not really, not the way that elections are conducted today. People in power, and there are some exceptions, of course, and you know this, there are people who don't, their incumbency doesn't help them, Trump, things happen. But incumbency is a problem in the sense that we don't have campaign finance reform. So I think we need term limits in this country. Yeah. The only way that happens is if Congress wants to do it and your party's in no hurry to do that and the Republicans are in no hurry to do that,

which leads me back. You say you were anesthetized. If you have one quality, it is that you speak your own mind. Nobody is going to control you. But I think that's a little bit of a surrender to the system. I don't know why you're a Democrat and not because I'm vilifying that party. But what is this idea that, well, it would be so much worse if the Republicans were in charge than the Democrats? Well, that was the theory of the case most recently in getting rid of Trump. But do you really believe that the Democrats have shown that when they're in power, America is a much sweeter, stronger place?

No, no, no, no, no. Maybe I'm not following your question, but I'll tell you what I do believe. Leave the party, question mark, is the question. Or should I leave the party? Yeah. So does being a member of the party mean I march in lockstep with every word that comes out of their mouths, people who are raising money for the campaign? Very often,

it seems to. No, I'm not really concerned about that. I mean, I'm a Democrat because of a tradition. There's a tradition of democratic politics that I believe in lately. Lately, I'm not so sure. I mean, I'm somebody who I'm not going to assign blame, and I'd like an explanation. Nobody owes me an explanation. I don't expect an explanation. But the fact that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, that they ran that anemica campaign, that horrified me. I was absolutely speechless.

I was in a fog for days. I couldn't believe that Donald Trump, who everybody in New York knew, was a punchline. I don't care what Mark Burnett did. I blame Mark Burnett for everything, because he's got all the outtakes and all the stuff where he hid who Trump was from people. He put Trump on TV, made him a TV star, and fly over America. If you lived in New York, you knew that Trump was never a table mate at an event. He walked the red carpet with his wife, whoever his wife was at the time, had his picture taken, and then left. You never sat down and got to know him. He never hung out with him. He didn't have a

friend in all of New York. He had transactional relationships with people that he manipulated, but who wanted the same thing. They tolerated him the way people in the movie business tolerated Harvey Weinstein. The similarities between Weinstein's trajectory and Trump's are shocking. Lots of people covered up for Harvey. Lots of famous, successful, smart, well-liked people

who they were doing business with him. So they looked away at things that Harvey did. They looked away. But I don't think Trump won because people misunderstood him. I believe in blame. I believe in criticism because I think that's all.

So who do you blame for that election? The Democratic Party's collective forgetting of whom they were supposed to be fighting for and how. The people who voted for Trump, many of them, not the religious extremists, okay? That's a different group, but they've only become more powerful because not their numbers have grown so much, but so many others have fallen away from the process. Working class, which is most of this country, people with regular needs, regular expectations, regular lives, used to be Democrats. regular expectations, regular lives, used to be Democrats. Too many of them voted for Trump, for Hillary Clinton to win in states that mattered. And there are a number of reasons for that,

no question. I'm never for single factor analyses, but I put that on the Democrats. They have fallen away from where they were, what Mario Cuomo was. And I don't deify my father. I loved him. He was as flawed as any man. But who he fought for and what he spoke about as a Democrat, that's not your party anymore. No, that's not Hillary Clinton. I don't even think that's AOC and the people who call themselves progressives. I mean, their remedies have almost no basis in reality of any type of incremental pragmatism, which was what my father was always about. All you guys were back then, you know, well, what can we get done? How do we get it done? And I believe the metric for you to look at is Manchin. Manchin hasn't changed. He's been the same guy forever. Manchin hasn't changed.

He's been the same guy forever. Now he's a thorn in your side. Who changed, him or the party? For me, when I was in school, my dad was a Democratic committeeman. I mean, your father was obviously the governor of New York. I'll never forget people speculating about your father going on the Supreme Court

for a while, and he was going to perhaps be the president and so forth. My dad was a schoolteacher who was a Democratic committeeman who was very devoted to liberal politics. A white guy who grew up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, but went to Boys High and played football with a bunch of Black guys. He was a very open-minded.

He didn't have a racist bone in his body. And he took us to Robert Kennedy's funeral when I was 10 years old. We stood in line on Park Avenue, coming all the way down from the Pan Am building and hooked the left turn and hooked the left turn into the northern elevation there on 51st Street or whatever it was of the church. My dad was someone who, if you wanted to communicate with my dad, I can't even imagine what it was like for you. But if you wanted to have any communion with my dad, it was about politics and about history and so forth. So I remember as a kid, I'm 10 years old, and the only way I could hang with my dad was to watch the Vietnam War on TV in 1968. In 1968, my father changed profoundly as a human being. He changed almost unrecognizably because his mother died that October. He had turned 40 years old the year before.

So in the fall of 67, he turns 40, which is a big thing for men back in those days in the Arthur Miller sense of things. The Democratic convention comes, Nixon, who is Dracula to my father, pulls the stake out of his heart, becomes the nominee. King is killed.

Kennedy is killed. His mother dies. And then the Prince of Darkness becomes the President of the United States. And after that year, from the fall of 67 to the fall of 68, when that was over, my father was unrecognizable after that. You wouldn't even know him. He just completely shut down as a human being. And that had a profound effect on me to watch how the country trembling, the country quaking in fear about men extending the Vietnam War. I mean, I played Robert McNamara in a TV movie for John Frankenheimer, his last project, before he died. I'm sitting at a party out here in East Hampton, and Richard Holbrook says to me,

just read the 40 pages in Halberstam, he me, just read the 40 pages in Halberstam, he says. Just read the 40 pages in Halberstam about McNamara. It's all there. That's all you need to do the research. I said, thank you, sir. He was very helpful, Holbrook. And I read those 40 pages. And then the fact that these guys were lying, I was a big fan of Robert Anson. He said, everything you have to view in American history is in a pre and post Watergate world. After Watergate, we knew what politicians were capable of. We knew that the depths they sunk to, to hold onto their power. And before Watergate, we didn't know. So we view other things through the prism of that. Kennedy's

assassination, both Kennedy's, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So for me, there was a democratic party that was, and I'm embarrassed to say this in front of you because of your political provenance, but I simplify it tremendously just to say, how can we use the might of the government to do the greatest amount of good for the most number of people? John F. Kennedy, there's a speech he has in front of some, I have it in my phone. I have the speech in my phone. And JFK speaking to some labor union, like in Pennsylvania, and he says, Harry Truman once said, there are 13 million Americans, this is back then, who have the money and the resources to have their interests advanced in the Congress. And he said,

the job of the President of the United States is to represent the interests of the other 260 million people, or whatever the number was back then. And he goes, and that's how I intend to approach this job. And people are cheering. And that was my soul. My soul politically was how do we help people? I've got what I need. In the great American experiment, I'm a kid from Massapequa. I had nothing. I went into this business. This is not even what I still don't want to do this for a living. I still don't like it. I still wish I went to law school. I fucked up so badly. I did this crap for my work, I've had some success. I did. I did. Okay. And, but I'm not somebody who I can only think about myself and, you know, like, well, like what do I get? I've never, and I'll finish with this. I've never worked on behalf of a cause politically that lined my own pockets

ever. Never. I'm not pro-fracking. You know what I mean? I got no skin in the game on anything that I've advocated for. Is that why you keep sticking your head up all these years when you know that people are going to try to chop it off every time?

I mean, even the, you know, in doing research for this, my producer put together a packet and, you know, one, I forgot how long we've known each other. And obviously, as you know, I'm close to your, one of your brothers, Billy, and I'm looking through like the timeline of stuff. And I was like, boy, this guy has been getting his ass kicked for decades. And you're- But predominantly by one group of people. Yeah. And I expected from them.

Yeah, but you keep getting into fights with them. And I'm not talking about some bullshit over a parking space or even paparazzi, which I totally understand when they're around your loved ones, why you could get angry to the point of being physical. I totally get that. I'll never judge it otherwise. But you keep taking on these fights. Why?

You know the rule. The advice you would give to me, shut up, put your head down. I don't agree. Whatever problems I've had in the press and people wanting to paint you a certain way and paint you as volatile. I mean, people who know me privately know who I am. And when I go out in the street, for example,

you mentioned paparazzi. I don't have an argument with a paparazzi who's 75 feet away with a long lens camera. I'm not yelling at you for taking my picture. What I get angry about is when you almost chip my wife's teeth with the lens of your camera because you're getting a little too close and no one's going to help me. The cops aren't going to help me. One of the things Bloomberg wanted to make sure happened was the law they were going to pass in LA they would never pass in New York because all of Bloomberg's media pals said, don't you dare do that. We make too much money off these photographs. And they don't tell you what they're saying to you before they raise the lens and start recording. Oh, no, you never see the other side. And when they grab your wife so that you see it.

They say something unpleasant about your wife. These people hate liberals that can throw a punch, rhetorically. I do a lot. They hate it. They view liberals. They think all liberals are bowtied, Tweety, Moynihan-esque gentlemen from the Ivy League or whatever. Moynihan-esque gentleman from the Ivy League or whatever. If you have any balls,

if you are a liberal with a pair of balls, they hate you. They hate you. They're terrified of you because all of them are all mouth. Hannity, O'Reilly, all these guys, they're all mouth. And they want to intimidate people. They're given this free pulpit to come in and attack you and say untrue things about you or to distort things. And the thing is, in the kind of Weimar Germany way, just say the same lie over and over again, and people will buy that lie. And for me, it's like, if you only knew how much stuff I haven't responded to. If you only, I had a cop. This guy said that I threw him against a car or whatever. He almost punched me in the face or hit me in the face with his camera. They lunge at you like this with one hand.

And I'll never forget this cop, a rare moment when a New York City cop was my advocate. He gets me aside. He goes, Mr. Baldwin, a lot of people say that you can't control your temper. And he goes, I can't imagine what you would really like to do to these people if you could just cut loose on them. I mean, I think you really hold back pretty well. I mean, I can't even imagine what you'd want to do to them if you had the chance. And I was like, well, thank you, Officer O'Malley.

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because we've been spending a lot of time on negativity. And the way that you live your life is you have to take a deep breath every day. You have to sit there and say, what are the things that are said that are true? And what are the things that are said that are not true? And I have to affirm that for myself every day. Is that new?

No, I would say it's been a part of my life since my divorce. Nothing will make you question who you are like what people say about you in a divorce proceeding. Have you started or reaffirmed anything differently based on the year that you've had? We haven't even discussed what should have been the biggest blow in your life was the head of the Baldwin family. Their father passed away way too early. Your mom just passed. She was a great woman and a community organizer and a leader and a helper with cancer. My father loved her. My mother loved her. Everybody with my last name loved her and respected her. And she did such great things with all of you.

You lost her. Yeah, my mom died in May and she was ready to go. She was mentally, I was shocked that she remained mentally alert right to the end. And she was crisp and sharp and alert, but her body was just like a bag. She really just was so fragile. And she got to a point where in a 48-hour period, her lungs, she just struggled breathing. They brought her in and her body was shutting down. Every single person in my family, many of them live in that immediate area in Syracuse, because when my dad died and we were on the island, my family all relocated up there because it was cheaper for them to live. My sister Beth had six kids and so forth. They moved up there to Syracuse and my sister's kids

and my whole family, everyone was in that room when she died. They all got there to that room because she'd been sick. They were telling us that it was not looking good. And I was in a car taking my family to Vermont, going to drop them off for the Memorial Day weekend, race to Syracuse to try to catch some time with her before the inevitable took place. And she literally died while I was on the phone FaceTiming. One of the women who worked with us had a phone and they were holding the phone while I was driving. And we were literally FaceTiming in the room. And my mother died right when I was on the phone with my mother. I mean, she wasn't talking.

She was in a semi-coma. They gave her morphine or whatever to have her relax. Because they told us, they said, we're going to take this oxygen mask off of her. And she's going to pass away because her carbon monoxide levels were so high. But the thing about my mom is that really has been so inspiring to me. Because I was much closer to my dad than my mom when I was younger. Because my dad was somebody who, he was such a Scorpio. You know, like in order to get to know him, you really had to dig deep.

And he made you come to him. You know, he was not gregarious. He was very smoldering and very kind of moody. To be with my dad, maybe you know something about this because your father seemed like a pretty serious dude. And to be intimate with him, you had to do it on his playing field. But later on, when my dad had died

and my mom got into the breast cancer thing in 96, she taught me about third acts in life. My mom had a third act. I mean, she went to do this whole thing and built the thing on the island and then they went upstate and did another chapter up there. And I have been, I can't even put into words how enormously proud I am of my mom of what

she did, because I never would have thought she was capable of doing that. Well, it's an interesting aspect of her. And again, you know, I'm very sad that she passed, but I'm of the same mindset that you seem to have, which is you never want anybody around when they're suffering, when they're not themselves anymore and they can't live the way they want to, then you got to make peace with it. Even when you love them and you're going to miss them terribly. But your mom in her effectiveness was a mentality. And I felt that every time I was around her, I'm here to make it better. You spend your

time talking your trash about why things are wrong and this and that. I'm just going to try to work with people who want to make things better. That's all. I have no interest in any of the other stuff. Do you believe there's any hope for that in our larger community right now? I mean, God willing, we'll always have the Carol Baldwin's, but the idea that things can get better. You said I'm dwelling on the negative too much. Where's the hope? I don't think everything that people do is a class A felony. There are people that are canceled. There are people who've had these dramatic and traumatic shifts in their lives as a result of things that they're responsible for. No one's saying they're not responsible for A or B or C, but does that mean we have to show them the door and they're gone? I mean, we just get rid of them? Meaning, like I always use the same example,

did Felicity Huffman need to go to jail for what happened with the college admissions scandal, or was the smarter play to tell Felicity Huffman, who's one of the most admired actresses in this business, people that I know love Felicity Huffman and admire her. Did we say to her, go to Cal State Northridge and teach acting for free for two semesters, one semester every year, that's your sentence. Meaning, someone came back to me online and said, well, what about the African-American woman who went to prison for five years for her false registration? And I said, I don't think she should have gone to prison either. This idea that cancellation means that everybody's the same, that Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor, Kevin Spacey, all of them live on some island, is absurd to me. live on some island is absurd to me.

And the idea being that if you take somebody and they have some problem that they've created, they're responsible for and they own it. And you say to them, let's get them some counseling. Let's do this, but you don't need them to lose their job. You don't need them to end their career. The impact on there.

No, there are people. Yes, they need to go to prison. They need to go to prison, but I mean, or they need to be, they need to be gotten out of the building, so to prison, but I mean, or they need to be, they need to be gotten out

of the building, so to speak, but not everybody deserves that. I do believe, and I think we're going to start to see that we're going to start to see, I don't think the word is backlash. That's a little more emotional. Take the emotion out of it. And just the logic. I mean, I'm the kind of person who I let everybody out of prison who was in prison for a year for a drug possession offense.

I want you to go to prison and get a taste of it. One year, get a taste of it, and I'm going to let you out. Not drug dealers where there's guns involved and tax evasion. If you are a casual person who possesses any kind of drug, it's one year and you get, if you go back again, it's different. But this idea that we have to just terminate, erase all this other stuff. I mean, I think you understand what I'm talking about. Sure. I just, you know, for me, I guess if there is an outcome of the last seven months or so for me, obviously it's got a lot of different layers because I don't really see it as being that much about me, even though I paid a price. I see it about my brother and my family, my father's legacy and how all the kids and grandkids have had to process what happened. I have a really stiff resolve that I just want to spend my time on fixes and on fixing the group think. And I know a lot of Democrats are really mad at me right now

or being told to be really mad at me. And one, I can't, you know, and you know me, so it's different. I can't tell you how ineffective a mechanism that is in getting to change my mind. The thing about New Mexico and what happened with Helena Hutchins is that what was this just inconceivably painful thing because it's so unfamiliar you know I mean like someone dies and the assumption that you had any real responsibility for that was so painful for me and just I can't even put it into words and you have a family and you have kids and my wife. And if it weren't for my wife, I mean, if it weren't for my wife, my wife is literally one of the five most remarkable human beings I've ever met in my life. And beyond her physical beauty that I'm in love with my wife as

a woman and I'm her husband and blah, blah, blah, and attraction and all those things. My wife is a very special person who saved my life. She saved my life. She took control of my life for a while and said, let's just sit down and do some very serious thinking about what's going to happen. And I do believe, I mean, the process is slow. I am deeply, deeply, deeply resentful and bitter about how slow the process has been because I've had to wait for months and months and months before somebody could peel me off of the case. But I'm going to have a lot to say about that once the report comes in. Once the report comes in, we're going to say a lot of things that people don't know. Why? Because I need people to understand what really happened. Why? I need people to

really understand. The truth is important to me. It's the truth. But if you know what you think is true and the process resolves itself, let's say in your favor, and I know that doesn't feel right because of how hard it was and how bad the outcome is, but why does anybody else have to understand, especially people who want to not like you? Oh, I know that I don't care about. I'm not out to change anybody's minds. I know that's impossible in the society we live in. That's not possible. But the point is that I work in a business where the winds can blow

and you can be buffeted by these winds in a way that it's just, it's absurd how in social media, everything now is this person said this and this person did this. And the accusations and the scandal mongering is something that I never believed was possible. And for me, if you say the Tylenol has arsenic in it or whatever they said years ago, it was the Tylenol scandal. Well, the difference is in my business, you're the Tylenol, you're the product. The president of the Tylenol company can be a

sexual harasser. And that doesn't really, you know, back then that wouldn't matter. All that mattered was the fact that there was poison in the Tylenol. In my business, you're the Tylenol. What they say about you, you are the product. Same with you. Then there's a tremendous sensitivity on my part. As I said, say anything you want to say about me that's true, say anything you want to say about me that's true.

Say anything you want to say about me that's true. And then the things that aren't true, there's enough to say about me that's true. Did I have this altercation with this paparazzi? Did I tell this guy to go F himself? Did I whatever? Sure. But the things that are not true, please don't pile on with things that aren't true. The last thing I want to say is the hope for me, and this is all on faith, where we had what I considered a failing grade or at best a D for our society

during the early stages of COVID, how people responded, what their responsibilities were, what they should have done, how they should have approached this. We failed, not miserably, but we failed. And I do believe that this was a rehearsal for climate change, because climate change is going to dictate a number of sacrifices and changes in our behavior. They're going to be overwhelming. There's going to be things you can't eat anymore. They're not going to have enough water to water livestock. You're not going to be able to eat beef. I know people that are moving. I mean, we bought a house in Vermont. I know people that are moving to the Northeast because they want to live somewhere where water is protected

and they can grow their own food. I know people that are buying climate change-related real estate in the Northeastern United States, Canada, they're all going somewhere where they want to have a nice 50 acres in their pocket just in case the water comes up on Bluff Road here, whatever your thing is. And my point is I'm hopeful that what we're seeing now in terms of the government addressing climate change, Manchin I have no hope for. Anybody from a coal state, I have no hope for. But I do believe that climate change may be the thing where we finally get it. And we realize that we have to work together

and make sacrifices in terms of energy. I mean, I don't want to bore you with my whole pitch about that. But I think that climate change may finally be our back really against the wall. It has to happen in an incremental way that people understand in the present as opposed to a boogeyman of the future. I'm going to let you go, but I want to ask you a couple of quick pop political questions. Sure. Do you think Joe Biden, president of the United States, deserves a second term?

Well, I think that two years is an eternity politically, as you know better than I do. And I think that between now, you know, what happens in the midterms will be very determinative. Listen to your squishy ass. Does he deserve a second term? Do you back him for a second term? No, I think he does deserve a second term. But again, his age is a factor. Two years from now, how he's going to be feeling will be a factor. You don't think it's a factor now? It wasn't two years ago? Only in two years it'll be a factor. I think that he inherited a horrible set of circumstances in the post-COVID world, and I'm not going to deny that. I mean, Joe Biden was handled a bowl full of horse manure and asked to make it into meatloaf, you know what I mean, or at the very least. And I have tremendous

appreciation of that fact that Trump was a sociopath who drove the ship right into the iceberg and didn't care, especially in terms of COVID policy. I think that if you evaluate him now, he deserves a second term, where he's going to be, I mean, every year when someone is his age is critical, we'll see. You hear people, I mean, again, this is your world. Who knows? Gavin Newsom, DeSantis, who knows who the emergent players will be? Is there any chance that you would support someone who isn't a Democrat? I say all the time, if John McCain was alive, I'd back John McCain, even though I disagree with him on a number of issues, because he was a real guy. Did you vote for him against Obama? disagree with him on a number of issues because he was a real guy. Did you vote for him against Obama? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

I would vote. No, I vote, I vote for, I vote for under the right circumstances. But let me just say one thing. The Hamptons Film Festival showed the CNN film Navalny and Daniel Rohrer, the filmmaker was here and Navalny, we aired the. And Navalny's wife came and his kids. And it was very stirring screening of the film. It was really wonderful. And I had seen the film before, but I loved this film. And of course, all of us go to dinner afterward and we're saying, you know, a bunch of us from the film festival were saying, like, who's the Navalny? You know, where is that person which you almost never see in political life?

And I think you know who I'm leading up to. Well, they sacrificed their whole career for their principles. I mean, I want to look at Chuck Schumer and I want to go, now, during the 2008 financial crisis, why didn't you come out in favor of stiffer banking regulations? Is it because you're the head of the DSCC and you raise a lot of money for the DSCC from these banking people, so you backed off of them? Where's the man or woman that's willing to self-immolate over principle? You're willing to end your career over principle.

And we do have one today. We do have one who's the Navalny of our current political culture, and that's Liz Cheney. And I'm very, very, very heartened to see Liz Cheney do the right thing. I mean, even though her politics heretofore was not my cup of tea, and her father was somebody who was like a villain to me on a movie poster. Would you vote for her because of what she's demonstrated and going after her own party? That's a very good question. And I'd have to think about that. It depends on who the opponent is. I think that Liz Cheney is somebody who, as I saw someone write about, and again, something you and your family knows infinitely more about, and that is that Liz Cheney, to me, is someone who I would certainly consider

a great candidate for some political appointment. I respect the move given the state of play. I find it depressing that her move is seen as such an enormous gesture given the state of play, that what she did should be common. It should be ordinary, not extraordinary. Is there any chance that you would support a non-Democrat or Republican party candidate? Would you think third party, fourth party, if they existed? If I thought they could win. I mean, I knew that Sanders couldn't win. That's why I couldn't support Sanders. Sanders said a lot of things.

He was on my podcast. Forget about charming. He wasn't the most effective speaker or eloquent speaker. I mean, Sanders is not, you know, Adlai Stevenson. You know what I mean? But the point is that I would support someone if I thought that they had a chance, you know? And by the way, when you say— Liz Cheney, third party, fourth party? That should be common. Yeah, it should be ordinary, not extraordinary. It should be ordinary. You know

who that is? You know who you sound like? Who do you sound like? When you think that that kind of valor and that kind of commitment to public service should be more common and less foreign to us, who do you sound like? A guy who got tossed out of the game? You sound like Mario Cuomo. who do you sound a guy who got tossed out of the game you sound like mario cuomo pop i don't even know what he would do with any of these things that we're discussing right now this world would make no sense and it's not like he was you know some rube my father saw tons of deception and dirty tricks and all this stuff and he had all these personal things all going against him he was a white guy at a time that he wasn't allowed to be a white guy. He was a swarthy ethnic. They used to describe him as a hot-blooded Italian, you know, with the circles under his eyes and the gap-toothed

grin. He wasn't a white guy yet. My father, towards the end of his life, somebody read to him a piece about me and the idea of white privilege. And he went to, he called them, they got me on the phone. And as they showed, he went, hot damn, we made it. They described you as a white guy in this. And finally, because he was always the swarthy ethnic and the outsider and the less than, and that motivated his service. So let me say this. I really do not envy what you have had to deal with as a family with all these young kids,

hard things, professionally, personally, but I must say, I respect that you just keep coming. And that is a signature trait for who you are. I appreciate your head. I appreciate your heart. And I appreciate you coming on the project. Well, but I want to close by saying that I had a great retirement plan. I did fairly well financially. I had one kid. I was in my early fifties. I thought I could slow down and do a little off-Broadway theater here and there, do a little part in a film, see the world. Even now I turn to my wife and I'll

whisper to her, you realize where I'm supposed to be right now, don't you? And by that, I mean like David Geffen's yacht in Nice. I'm supposed to be having a nice vacation. What did I do? We have six kids and our seventh kid coming and I'm 64 years old. So why do I put my head down and keep going? What choice do I have? I got a family. That's it. Oh, you mean that? Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Oh, God. Anyway, having kids because you enjoy creating a population you care about and you love and who love you back. You're certainly secure in a legacy, but you better keep working. You better hope you keep your hair. Oh, God, I'm going to be doing. I told people I'm going to be a greeter in Vegas any day now. I'm going to be. Remember me? I was in Beetlejuice. How are you, everybody? Please.

Table nine, Frank. Table nine. I'm going to be a greeter in Vegas any day now. I'll see. I'll see you out there. Thanks for the show. Best to the family. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Best to the family. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Well, here's something you can probably agree with. Alec Baldwin gives you a lot to think about. Now, whether you're following what happened on the set of Rust and what it means for him,

here's what my takeaway is. One, I don't think Alec Baldwin is asking for the media to chase after other people the way they're chasing after him, who had a connection to that movie. I think he just wants it to stop altogether. Legally, I think this is going to largely be civil unless an investigation finds that somebody put a loaded round and a weapon on a movie set and either did it on purpose or was so negligent in doing so that there is criminal responsibility. I do not think there is any chance that person will be Alec Baldwin. Civilly, it's a little different. The issues there then become about, well, the responsibility of the production. Okay, where is he in that? He is a producer, but was he one of the producers who's responsible for the hiring and the maintenance of the staff? Maybe, maybe not. That's a question. Is there insurance? Would the insurance cover that

kind of claim, meaning that a producer, if it's Alec Baldwin or anybody else, wouldn't be personally responsible? Maybe, maybe not. There's certain things that will vacate or override or violate an insurance policy. Levels of negligence, different findings. You can also do what they call in the law, piercing the corporate veil, which means even though there's a company involved here, we'll get past that protection and come at you personally. Those are relatively high standards.

And I think that's all civil litigation. If nothing else, the residue of this is gonna be seen in Baldwin's future career prospects. And I do think it's interesting how it has been ignored in all of this noise about whether or not he sees himself as the victim and this and that. Imagine having to live with what he has to live with now. What he knows happened by his hand, if not with any intent or any crime or any ultimate responsibility beyond what he feels in his own head and his heart. I have to believe it's a very heavy burden. What do you think?

What do you think about what he said about the Democrats and about our culture and about where we're headed politically and socially in this country? Let me know. You can hit me up on social media. You can get me a million different ways. And you can call us. It's 516-412-6307. Call, leave your email, leave your message.

As always, thank you for joining the Chris Cuomo Project. Subscribe, tell your friends, tell your message. As always, thank you for joining the Chris Cuomo Project. Subscribe, tell your friends, tell your family. Let's get the word to spread because there's so many free agents and I know we all want better. See you next time.