During Tuesday night’s post-election special The Messy Truth With Van Jones, the political commentator brought on various voices to discuss the state of both major American political parties, including liberal filmmaker Michael Moore. Jones, a vocal Democrat, was ready to hear problems facing both sides of the aisle, saying early in the program, “I think both political parties need to take a good long look in the mirror because right now, they both kind of suck.” He called on Moore to speak on the Democrats weaknesses because the documentary-maker famously called Donald Trump’s win in the Rust Belt months before the election. “First of all, I haven’t been grieving for the last month because I got over my five stages back in June,” Moore quipped. He explained that he could see what the polls weren’t showing, because he understood that the Rust Belt was hurting economically. “They saw Trump as their human Molotov cocktail that they wanted to throw into the system and blow it up,” Moore said. “They didn’t necessarily agree with everything with Trump, but they were angry enough to make this point.”
Moore reiterated that he was particularly adept at understanding the working-class voters of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, who were previously a stronghold for Democrats. “I live in Michigan, I don’t live in the bubble,” Moore told Jones. When a fellow Michigan voter spoke to Moore about why he liked Trump — the president-elect’s negative stance on NAFTA — Moore agreed with NAFTA’s problems, but insisted that he wasn’t sure Trump would make the changes necessary. “He has an ideology that he believes in, and it’s called Donald J. Trump. That’s what he’s going to make sure that he’s gonna take care of.”
