AFTER ROB REINER AND HIS WIFE MICHELE WERE FOUND DEAD IN THEIR LOS ANGELES HOME LAST WEEKEND, THEIR 32-YEAR OLD SON NICK WAS ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH TWO COUNTS OF FIRST DEGREE MURDER.

THE FAMILY TRAGEDY UNLEASHED WAVES OF CONDOLENCES AND TRIBUTES FROM ALMOST EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED PUBLICLY -- TRIBUTES TO HIS TALENT, POLITICAL ACTIVISM, AND FOR THEIR FAMILY.

ROB REINER JOINED ME FOR AN EPISODE OF FIRING LINE IN 2019.

WE TALKED ABOUT HIS POLITICAL ACTIVISM, AND A LOT MORE.

HERE IS WHAT ROB REINER SAID THEN: - [Announcer] Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, and by the following.

HOOVER: Rob Reiner, welcome to Firing Line.

REINER: Thanks for having me.

HOOVER: It's such a delight to be with you.

You are an iconic film director REINER: Really?

HOOVER: of classic American films like Stand By Me and The Princess Bride, and This is Spinal Tap.

And almost more germane to this conversation is the role you played as the son in law of Archie Bunker REINER: Yes.

HOOVER: on All In the Family.

REINER: Yes.

HOOVER: But you have gone on from your acting career and your directing to become a political activist.

I met you first on a cause that maybe started as a liberal cause but then became a bipartisan cause.

REINER: Right.

HOOVER: Where you worked very closely with conservative legal icon Ted Olson and liberal lion David Boies REINER: Right.

HOOVER: to challenge the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California which outlawed same sex marriage.

REINER: Right.

And that led to essentially making it the law of the land to allow for same sex marriage.

And I remember you know when we had the first trial in San Francisco in the district court you were there.

HOOVER: I sat next to you in Federal District Court!

REINER: That's where we met.

That's the first time we met.

And it was an interesting, you know, dichotomy between, as you say, David Boies and Ted Olson, because the way Ted Olson talked to me about it the first time I met him, and I even said to him when when when we first met, I said, you realize you put me in bed for two days in the Bush v. Gore argument because he was on the side of George Bush.

And, as it turned out, David Boies was on the side of Al Gore.

And the fact that they teamed up basically took the politics out of the issue.

And what he said to me is that he viewed marriage as a very conservative idea that is the bedrock of conservative principles that a married couple should be allowed to, you know, to be able to be together and to have a family.

So that was to me an eye opener HOOVER: Well it was an eye opener hearing a conservative make a case for a value, an ideal that you believed in.

REINER: Right.

HOOVER: And since then have there been any opportunities to forge that kind of a bipartisan consensus on the political issues you've been involved in?

REINER: Well, I mean obviously the country is so divided now.

It has been divided for a long, long time.

I mean there was a huge divide that started over the Vietnam War and that divide has never closed.

It has kept getting wider and wider.

And I do believe that this last election in 2016, that divide was exploited.

The Russians saw an opportunity where there was a huge divide and the addition of social media, which blew it up all out of proportion.

And we have been in that place ever since.

Now, can there be consensus?

Of course there can.

And what I've discovered, and it's kind of a weird thing that -- and Trump has done more, I think, to even divide us further -- in that I've made a lot of Republican friends over this people that I would not have normally talked to like David Frum HOOVER: You mean Republicans who are never Trumpers?

REINER: Well, they didn't start out as never Trumpers.

Some of them did.

Some of them then went, like, what's going on here?

I mean, David Frum, and Steve Schmidt HOOVER: Max Boot.

REINER: and Max Boot, and Nicole Wallace.

And I mean you go down the list, and all of a sudden These are not people that I would necessarily agree wholeheartedly on issues, but certainly they argue their point with a basis in fact.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, you know, you're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

At least there's a common basis of fact that you can discuss things with them.

And I find that, you know, I've had dialogues with a number of Republicans.

I've always said you cannot have a healthy democracy unless you have a healthy Republican Party and a healthy Democratic party, so that we can actually debate the ideas of where we are.

I mean we are a capitalist nation, but we also have a lot of socialist programs inside the capitalist nation, and we have to find a way to balance those things.

And the only way to do that is to have two parties arguing with a common set of facts.

HOOVER: Right.

Same set of facts.

So, when you first played Meathead as you were endearingly called by your father in law REINER: Yes.

HOOVER: on All In The Family, I mean, you were the liberal son-in-law.

He was the conservative father-in-law and the divisions and the conflicts and disagreements you had on the show in many ways parallel the same disagreements that we're having today.

Let's look at a clip from All in the Family from the first moment you met Archie Bunker: MIKE: Let me tell you something, Mr.

Bunker.

ARCHIE: No, let me tell you something Mr.

Stivic.

You are a meathead.

MIKE: What did you call me?

ARCHIE: A meathead.

Dead from the neck up.

Meat head.

HOOVER: So you wrote that episode.

REINER: I did.

HOOVER: That is where they first met.

REINER: That's it.

That was a flashback to the first time Archie and Mike first meet.

HOOVER: And then they go on and throughout the entire course of the run of the show, it's marked by these fractures in their worldview, which we're gonna show a clip of.

Here it is.

ARCHIE: Send me your poor, your deadbeats, your filthy.

And all the nations that sent them in here.

They come swarming in like ants.

The Spanish PR's, your Japs, your Chinamen, your Krauts, and your Hebes.

All of them come in here.

And they're free to live in their own separate sections.

That's what makes America great, buddy!

REINER: [LAUGHS] HOOVER: How germane is that to the current debates that are happening?

REINER: Well, that's exactly the argument we're having now.

I mean, this is an argument that's as old as, older, than we are.

I mean you saw that happened in Nazi Germany in the 30s.

We saw it happen in Brexit, where one side demonizes the other, and then blames the other for their lot in life and tries to criminalize it.

And that's what we're seeing right now.

HOOVER: You joined Twitter, it's been reported, to troll President Trump.

REINER: I was so technologically inept.

I mean, I didn't email.

I didn't do Twitter.

I didn't do anything.

My father was on Twitter long before I was on and he's 97 now.

HOOVER: 97.

REINER: He just turned 97, yeah, and he tweets every day.

But my wife said, you know, this is, we've got to have a way to push back against Trump.

And so I joined Twitter and I started that, you know, in '90 2016.

HOOVER: What was it about him then that caused you to take him seriously?

REINER: Well, I mean, it's the cult of celebrity.

I mean, you know, the Republicans are the ones who do wind up HOOVER: Right.

I mean the celebrity presidents we have had have been Republican.

REINER: Ronald Reagan was a celebrity.

HOOVER: Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump.

REINER: Donald Trump.

I mean we've seen that happen.

You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a celebrity in California.

People are enamored with celebrity.

Personally, I didn't think he was going to win.

I really didn't.

My wife thought he was going to win, but I didn't think he was going to win.

But I thought, I knew this guy.

I mean, I knew his background HOOVER: Did you feel like you knew him because you knew him?

Or do you feel like you knew his voters because of the role you played and the time you spent with those ideas in All In The Family?

REINER: You know, it's funny.

I knew there was the disenfranchised white, working class and, in many cases, racist mindset in this country.

I knew there was an undercurrent of racism.

But I didn't know it's going to bubble to the surface like this.

HOOVER: But can I just ask you about that?

I mean, do you ever de-link those two?

That white, working class, non-college-educated voters have real economic grievances REINER: Absolutely.

HOOVER: and also cultural grievances that aren't racism or bigotry REINER: No, no, you're exactly right.

It's not all.

I mean, you can't say all, you know, Trump supporters are racist.

That's not true.

But there is a big chunk that are, that are comfortable with him saying, there are good people on both sides of that HOOVER: Or are not uncomfortable enough.

REINER: Yeah, I mean there were a number of Bernie Sanders supporters that wound up voting for Trump.

So it's not clear cut in that way.

But there are, you know, a lot of factory workers who lost their jobs, and not because of any particular thing, except for the fact that you had technology replacing them.

Not so much even the globalization, which is a part of it, sure, but not everything.

And Trump, you know, said, I'm going to bring those factory jobs back and we're going to And we knew that wasn't true.

Everybody knew that wasn't true.

And he's a huckster.

He's a great huckster.

He's like the best snake oil salesman ever.

I mean, he's a guy who can get up, lie his ass off, and people just believe it because, maybe it's because of celebrity.

They liked him on Celebrity Apprentice or they don't care that he's lying.

I don't know what it is.

All I know is it's poisonous for this country because it's one thing to say four years of somebody.

You can start derailing democracy in four years.

But you get eight years and there's a real chance There's no guarantee that democracy survives forever.

There's no guarantee.

It's just, we're just people and laws.

So if you destroy the structure, you destroy the laws, you could wind up with an autocracy.

And that's where we're headed right now.

HOOVER: Well, let's, let's talk about that because obviously the thing that distinguishes this country in our 242 years of history is that we are governed by laws REINER: Right.

HOOVER: and the rule of law.

And there does seem to be an alarmism, particularly from people who disagree with Trump, that our entire infrastructure of rule of law will unravel at the seat of one president.

REINER: I don't think it's necessarily the case, but I would put it to you this way HOOVER: Is that what you just said, though?

I mean, that's what you're saying, is that we could lose everything.

REINER: Yes.

Yes.

And this is why I'm saying it.

And I don't think it's going to happen.

I do think that, hopefully, the institutions will hold.

But right now what you have is a president who is thumbing his nose at the rule of law by not allowing, whether it's his tax returns, or people to, you know, testify in front of Congress.

Now, there are mechanisms to deal with that.

HOOVER: And are they working in your view?

REINER: Not yet.

We'll have to see.

Because we are just a nation of laws.

And who made the laws?

People.

HOOVER: Right.

REINER: And if people can disrupt that legal system, then where are we?

HOOVER: How much faith do you have REINER: And we're seeing that happen now.

HOOVER: Yeah.

I mean, look, I understand the concern and the worry and the constant need to be vigilant.

But are you optimistic that we will be able to retain those checks and balances?

Or are you concerned I mean, it sounds like you're quite concerned REINER: I'm nervous about it.

Benjamin Franklin said we're a republic if you can keep it.

HOOVER: If you can keep it.

REINER: If you can keep it.

And right now, we're being tested.

We, as a country, are being tested, whether or not we can keep it.

But there's no guarantee.

I mean when you look at the sweet spot of any great civilization, it's usually 250 to 300 years.

We're coming up against that.

So what we've seen in the recent four years is a sledgehammer to the institutions.

And I talk to a lot of constitutional law experts and many of them who said, you know, they respected William Barr.

He was an institutionalist and that he was going to be, you know, very, very down the middle with the rule of law.

He hasn't done that.

He hasn't done that yet.

He hasn't done that yet.

So my fear is that if we start destroying the Justice Department who ultimately would hold the president accountable and we don't have that then we start really dismantling things.

HOOVER: Well, yeah.

And there are varying views about whether the Justice Department should be a check on the executive branch, of course, but it's really the Congress that REINER: Well, it's not a check on the executive branch.

The Congress is the check on the executive branch.

HOOVER: Right.

REINER: But if the Congress shows criminality and it's referred to the Justice Department, and they say no HOOVER: Right.

REINER: then you have a situation where HOOVER: The check is the people.

REINER: The check becomes the people, and that becomes 2020.

HOOVER: So where is Rob Reiner going to focus his energy?

REINER: Well, my energy is going to be focused on making sure that Trump doesn't serve another term.

We cannot have that.

And I'm not just as a Democrat, as an American, I don't want American institutions For good Republicans, I don't want to see the country destroyed.

And the good Republicans that I talk to all the time are, like, their hair is on fire.

They don't understand why those people in Congress are in this cult where they're worried about their election.

At a certain point you've got to say, I care more about this country than I do about my getting reelected.

HOOVER: How can you be a constructive force in the 2020 field?

I mean, how do you see your role as REINER: What I try to do and it's going to be almost impossible because, you know, Joe Biden just got into the race.

And what has to happen is Democrats have to coalesce.

HOOVER: Do you think that the Democratic primary process will yield the candidate who is best to beat Donald Trump?

REINER: I hope so, boy.

I mean I like Joe Biden HOOVER: Because it seems like you like Joe Biden REINER: I like Joe Biden for that reason.

Because to me one of the things you do get in many of the polls is what's the number one issue.

I mean we're talking about health care, the environment.

Those are our big issues, and economic issues.

But beating Donald Trump is way at the top.

You know, who has the ability to beat Donald Trump.

And Joe Biden polls very high on that measure.

HOOVER: But at some point the field has to narrow.

And it is clear that the energy on the left on the Democratic side and the Democratic Party is on the progressive left.

That is really where REINER: Always is.

And same thing with Republican primaries.

They go hard hard to the right and then you have to swing to the middle for the general.

HOOVER: Well, that didn't happen on the Republican side in 2016.

Instead you got the hard right candidate who was the complete outsider, in a field of conservatives REINER: He wasn't the hard right candidate, because the hard right candidate believes HOOVER: Well, you're right.

He disrupted the conservative movement REINER: in international trade HOOVER: He disrupted what the mainstream conservative movement had heralded for frankly five decades, I mean, since William F. Buckley Junior began this program in 1966.

I'm going to play a clip for you from an early version of Firing Line where William F. Buckley Jr.

was sitting here on this set talking about REINER: Was he sitting like this?

HOOVER: Yes!

You're going to see him.

talking about your character.

REINER: Why did Bill Buckley always sit like this?

He was always like this.

HOOVER: You wouldn't have directed him like that.

REINER: Why was he sitting like this?

HOOVER: Let's take a look at this clip.

REINER: Yeah.

Let's see if he's sitting like that.

BUCKLEY: Incidentally, the program that I used to watch when it was on Saturday is Archie Bunker.

STEIN: A very good show.

BUCKLEY: It's hilarious.

But Archie Bunker is the greatest anti-conservative ripoff in the history of modern offenses.

FULDHEIM: Agreed.

BUCKLEY: I mean, you don't need Karl Marx.

All you need is Archie Bunker.

He's absolutely despicable, but he's kind of endearing in a way.

FULDHEIM: Don't you go giving yourself assets.

All conservatives are not endearing.

BUCKLEY: No, no.

I say the remarkable thing about it is that in a hideous kind of a way there's something endearing about this Archie is a horrible man STEIN: There is something endearing about him BUCKLEY: Troglodytic STEIN: but his points of view are always held up to be absolutely preposterous.

And not only that, mean.

BUCKLEY: He's a coward, a bully, a cheat.

REINER: He didn't like Archie.

HOOVER: He didn't like Archie because he didn't like that he characterized, he made a stereotype of conservatives that he didn't like.

REINER: Right.

HOOVER: So my question is, now that you've been a political activist and a director and an actor, where do you think you have the most impact in terms of really affecting hearts and minds about particular issues?

REINER: Well I think HOOVER: Is it directing and it is in Hollywood?

REINER: No.

HOOVER: With the culture?

REINER: No, no.

HOOVER: Or is it actually in the nuts and bolts of politics?

REINER: There you go.

HOOVER: Really?

REINER: There you go.

Because you know films are an artistic expression, but changing the needle?

I mean, All in the Family was on for eight years.

We were seen by 40 to 45 million people every week.

We brought these issues up every week.

And we were certainly part of the dialogue.

You know, people talked about it.

I mean, you didn't have TiVo and you didn't have DVRs.

So you had to watch the show.

So everybody had that shared experience and they were talking about it the next day.

But it didn't change the way you know America went.

It just HOOVER: You don't think it laid the foundation for certain legislation to get passed or to change attitudes, cultural attitudes?

REINER: Not really.

It just was part of the dialogue.

The only thing that Yes, you have to keep stoking the conversation and that hopefully leads to something.

But in order to get anything done you really have to get under the hood in the nuts and bolts of public policy in order to get it passed.

HOOVER: What really reared its head in 2016 was the economic malaise that had infected so much of the country, that that isn't the part of the country that that necessarily you or I or many people are from.

People have accused you of being a coastal elite.

You're from New York, you live in Los Angeles.

REINER: Yeah, yeah, all that garbage.

I actually had a government job for seven years I know in California.

Anyway, the point is, the two most important issues that I care about is, one, the environment, because that affects the whole planet, and, two, the survival of democracy.

Those are the two things I care about.

HOOVER: Well look, the people who elected Donald Trump elected him, right, on this I mean, the issue was a hollowed out Rust Belt, a hollowed out manufacturing base, an economy whose wages hadn't grown and had been stagnant for a decade who, an entire generation of men who were white working class non college educated men who didn't feel that Washington was working for them.

REINER: Right.

And now with new technology that we have, whether it's making broadband available for the whole country, whether it's factories that create solar panels, whether it's creating more wind farms, whatever it is, there's a new technology that will drive manufacturing.

Not coal plants and old technology that has been taken up with machines.

So there's an opportunity for those people that have been left behind to re-engage in a different kind of economy and in a different kind of manufacturing.

HOOVER: So in those states that the Democrats need to win in 2020, Hollywood isn't particularly popular, necessarily.

I mean, you know, I don't know if Rob Reiner is the most successful messenger.

REINER: No, no.

I'm not.

I'm not.

I'm not.

I understand that.

Listen, I can't tell you how many times I get 'libtard' you know on my Twitter feed.

I mean I'm the libtard of the world.

You know, I mean I get all that.

And I understand that you know I'm toxic in those ways for those people.

But if anybody wants to spend any time actually talking, and talking about how policy can be affected, how it can be put together, I can sit and talk with them.

HOOVER: As you became more political and more of a political activist, from being an actor to being a director, to then spending a lot of your own hard earned resources on the political issues you care about REINER: Yeah.

HOOVER: how did that impact your reputation in Hollywood?

REINER: Well, it didn't make it any worse for me in Hollywood.

The only way it hurts me in Hollywood is when I put out certain kinds of films like Shock and Awe or films that I've done recently, people hate me.

You know half the country hates me for it.

HOOVER: You mean the red states.

But in Hollywood they don't hate you.

REINER: Hollywood, they don't hate me.

But they hate the fact that they don't make as much money.

You know Hollywood is also driven by finance.

HOOVER: Do your movies suffer in red states because you made them?

REINER: Oh yeah.

Sure, sure.

But the only thing that's good for me is, I like making the movies.

And you know I'm now 72 years old.

So I mean I just want to do the things I want to do.

I enjoy doing it.

And some people will like them, others won't, and you know I can't worry about that.

HOOVER: So the inverse is conservatives in Hollywood, right.

So liberals maybe have a hard time in red states.

You know, if there were an inverse of you, right, a hugely successful actor and director who then became a political activist, but on the conservative side of issues in Hollywood, how would their relationship with the industry have been different than yours?

REINER: Well I think if they You know the bottom line is the bottom line for Hollywood, which is financial.

So if that person can make a lot of money for those Hollywood types they'll be fine with it.

HOOVER: Do you really think it's all about the bottom line REINER: They may not be liked in the community.

HOOVER: Right.

That's what I'm getting at.

REINER: I mean I have You know, Jimmy Woods is somebody I've worked with, James Woods, and we're on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum.

But, you know, you have to ask him if it hurts him in terms of getting hired, but I think somebody who's making the films, the director, producer, whatever, if they're making a lot of money, Hollywood doesn't care.

HOOVER: Do you think Hollywood is fair to conservatives?

REINER: Well, for the actor, maybe not.

Maybe not.

Because that's just, you know, you're just hiring somebody.

You can hire another actor.

But for the people who are in power to actually make the films, I don't think it matters.

Don't think it matters.

HOOVER: As you look to 2020, what gives you hope?

REINER: Two things I think need to happen.

One is Donald Trump, he has to be defeated, but he has to be defeated by a large margin.

And then we have to see him held accountable in some way other than the ballot box.

If it is determined that he committed crimes HOOVER: That he broke laws, you're saying.

REINER: I'd like to see him convicted.

Because if that doesn't happen, it basically paves the way for anybody to take stuff from foreign governments, hostile foreign governments, to line your pockets, to do whatever it is you want, and we don't want that in the president.

HOOVER: What you're saying is nobody should be above the law, including the president.

REINER: That's right.

That's right.

You can even argue, I mean, this is way beyond Watergate.

HOOVER: Do you ever get accused of Trump derangement syndrome?

REINER: What, being deranged?

HOOVER: Or just being I mean you have tweeted more than a thousand times REINER: A lot of tweets, all negative against Trump.

Yeah.

HOOVER: Do you think you've changed anybody's mind?

REINER: Who knows.

I don't believe I have changed many people's minds, but I believe there's two aspects to this.

One is, maybe you change a few people's minds around the margins.

Probably not.

What you do is you keep the people who are going to be engaged engaged to get out there and vote.

HOOVER: Rob Reiner, thank you for being here.

Thank you for being on Firing Line REINER: Thanks for having me.

- [Announcer] Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Pritzker Military Foundation, Cliff and Laurel Asness, and by the following.

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