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“Michael Moore in TrumpLand”: Filmmaker on Donald Trump, White Men & the Sound of Dying Dinosaurs

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With just days until the election, we spend the hour with the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore and talk about his surprise new movie, “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” which he performed live before an audience at the Murphy Theatre in Wilmington, Ohio, where there are 25,000 registered voters in the county and only 500 of them are registered Democrats.

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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, with the presidential election just days away, we spend the hour with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, yes, the director of Roger & Me, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine, Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story and Where to Invade Next. He has just released a surprise new film; it’s called Michael Moore in TrumpLand. Just hours ago, I sat down with Michael Moore right here in our New York City studios. We started with a clip from the trailer of his new film.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 1: A lot of people say that Trump is a clown. He won’t be when he’s president.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 2: If this is any indication of how Mr. Trump is going to do, it’s going to be landslide for Trump.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 3: I think it’s going to be close. And I think that Hillary is going to have dead people vote.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 4: Around here, I ain’t heard nobody for Clinton.

TRUMP SUPPORTER 5: You know, he didn’t get it handed down to him like Hillary did from her parents.

MICHAEL MOORE: Mr. President and Madam First Lady, uh, Michael Moore?

RADIO DJ: Michael Moore will perform a one-man show tonight.

MICHAEL MOORE: I really wanted to invite people who are thinking of voting for Donald Trump. … As a gesture of goodwill, the ushers asked Mexican Americans if they would sit in a special Mexican section. Production assistants will be building a symbolic wall around them in the balcony. … She said she’s from Guatemala. Close enough. … I’ll say three things nice about George W. Bush. … Woah! … We’re all Americans, right? I know there’s a rule: Don’t agree with Michael Moore on anything. But women generally don’t shoot you, unless you deserve it. … Out comes Beyoncé and 500 women! Wait! That’s our game! What’s she doing here? … Send in the next congressman, hee hee heeheehee! … The rest of Europe? They’re like, “Bye, Felicia.” … You can say something nice about everybody except Hitler and Matt Lauer. … Who doesn’t like the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage? Then, don’t get gay-married.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think that Hillary Clinton’s a hell of a good woman.

MICHAEL MOORE: A millionaire has the same number of votes as the person without a job.

NEWS ANCHOR: Donald J. Trump was sworn in today as the 45th president of the United States.

MICHAEL MOORE: He is the human Molotov cocktail that they can legally throw. If you elect me president, there will be one charge port for all devices!

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I just left Michael, and he’s a good man. He’s a good man. He’s done a good job.

MICHAEL MOORE: Aaaah!

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore in TrumpLand. Michael filmed most of the movie during a two-night stand before a live audience at the Murphy Theatre in Wilmington, Ohio. Wilmington is the county seat of Clinton County, Ohio, but it is hardly Clinton country. There are 25,000 registered voters in the county, and only 500 of them are registered Democrats. In a moment, Michael Moore will join us himself in our New York studio, but first a bit more from TrumpLand.

MICHAEL MOORE: If Hillary wins, if the women take over, and because they don’t need us—so, you know what’s going—this is going to lead to: There are going to be internment camps for men. And Hillary will have all her, you know, Wellesley students there with their clipboards checking us in to the internment camp. They’ve got to—they’ve got to pick out a few to keep the species going.

Who are they going to pick? The smart ones and the good-looking ones. So, all right, already I’m looking at the faces of the guys here. They already know they’re in the camp. We’re all in line. We’re going to be in line there. “You, in there, in the camp. Yes, you. Keep going. You, you. Oh, you, over here.” You guys are going, “Oh, just 'cause he's got a good six pack for the abs? I was going to start going to the gym last month.” “Well, you should have [bleep] gone! Because now you’re going to the camp! Don’t worry, there’s going to be lots of gyms in the guy camps.”

And that’s why they’re so upset. You’ve seen them at the rallies, right? These guys at the Trump rallies? They’re like, “Raaaaah! Raaaaah! Aaaaaaaagh!” It’s the sound of the dying dinosaur. “Ooooaaaaaah! Oooooooh!”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Michael Moore in TrumpLand. And Michael is right here in New York in DemocracyNowLand. Welcome back to Democracy Now!

MICHAEL MOORE: Yes, much safer place for me to be.

AMY GOODMAN: How much did you have to practice that dying groan?

MICHAEL MOORE: That, we had no chance for a rehearsal. So we filmed it as I did it for the first time. We were going to—we were supposed to be in another Ohio town east of Columbus, in Licking County, Ohio. And when it was announced that we were going to be there, the Republicans in town got the board of the theater to go back on their word to let us perform this there, and essentially banned me from the theater. So I had to go find another town very quickly. And that took up a lot of time, so I didn’t have a chance to do any rehearsal. I mean, I have spoken at colleges, and, you know, you’ve done this, too, but I’ve never done this sort—I’ve never filmed, I should say. I’ve never filmed this sort of thing. But I wanted to do a one-man show here, you know, in the U.S., for some time. So…

AMY GOODMAN: So talk about the audience. Who was in the audience?

MICHAEL MOORE: The audience was 800 seats in the theater. And we recruited this audience, because I wanted a good mix of people. About half the audience are Hillary supporters, about 400 of them. Then there’s about 100 to 150 Trump people, so they were leaning to voting for Donald Trump. There were 100 to 150 people who said they were planning on not voting, and then slightly less than 100 people that were going to vote third party. So I had quite a good mix of people there.

The Trump voters were—I mean, I did not want the crazies there, because I had the—I didn’t want the show disrupted, so, you know, the David Duke worshipers were not in the building. But we did go to union halls. And I wanted to go to places where—to look for mostly guys, let’s just be honest, guys who used to or have voted for the Democratic Party, but in this case they’re thinking of voting for Trump, and I wanted them to come there. And fortunately, a lot of the women in the area brought their husbands or boyfriends, and most of the women in the audience were, you know, very much in favor of Hillary. And you could see in the show, you know, the women are like this [clapping], and the guy sitting next them, you know, the husband, is like this [arms crossed, stern look], you know. But they—but they loosened up after a while. And by the end of it, I think maybe a few of them, I had maybe brought them around a little bit.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you talk to them, and you talk about the conservatives in the family. This is the one about everyone having a conservative in the family.

MICHAEL MOORE: Yes, we do.

MICHAEL MOORE: You know, these Trump voters, my friends, are going to be up 5:00 in the morning on Election Day. They’re up at 5:00 in the morning a lot. The only time we see 5:00 in the morning is when we’ve been up partying all night. That’s—that’s 5:00 in the morning. Yeah, right.

Come on, everybody in here has got a conservative in the family, right? Many of you brought that person with you here tonight—a brother, a father, an uncle, a brother-in-law, a sister—not a sister, I know. I just threw that in there. And they are the organized one in the family. They never lose their car keys. The conservative—they’ve got little hooks in the—by the back door, with a label on each hook. That’s my beamer key. That’s my F-150 key. That’s the key for the car Matthew McConaughey drives. Our side, we’re like—this is how we—this is how we sound. This is how we sound: “So, uh, where do you want to go eat tonight?” “I don’t care. Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know, wherever you want to go.” “No, no, no, no, you picked last time.” “No, I—seriously, wherever you want.” This is like—this is like—the conservatives, they’re like, “Get in the car! We’re going to Outback! Get in there!” Decisive! Organized! Disciplined! You’ve got to admire that about them.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, and he is doing a kind of one-man show in Clinton County, which is actually TrumpLand, Michael Moore in TrumpLand. And you’re not like guessing about how people you don’t agree with think. I mean, you grew up in Michigan.

MICHAEL MOORE: Right, and still live there. So, I am around a lot of people who are planning to vote for Donald Trump. And a lot of people I grew up with, who are—you know, a lot of them are guys and women, like me, who are of this age, and they—you know, they’re angry. And they’re angry for justifiable reasons, because they went and got jobs in the auto factories, and they lost those jobs, and now, you know, if they’ve been able to get another job, they’re working for a lot less money. Some of them are working two or three jobs. And they’re really, really angry at the system. And they see Trump as their human Molotov cocktail, where they get to—you know, they get to go in the voting booth next Tuesday and just go beep, you know, just whip him right into the system, because he has told them, in his own words, he’s going to blow it up. He’s going to blow it up. So, it becomes then sort of a legal act of terrorism, right? You get to—you actually get to go in, vote for a man who says he’s going to blow up the system, and you, who have been hurt by the system, get to enjoy that. And so, I’ve—you know, I’ve spent a lot of time in Michigan and Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, what I call the Brexit states. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain why you call them “Brexit.”

MICHAEL MOORE: Well, because Brexit was passed, in large part, because the white working class of industrial England and Wales voted—voted to leave Europe, because they wanted to send a message. And it’s—then they realized, after it happened, it’s like, “Oh, we actually have to leave Europe now.” Yes, you do, you know, because you were dealing out your anger management issues in a voting booth. You know? That’s not where—that’s not where you take care of your justifiable anger at the system. So—

AMY GOODMAN: And now they’ve just ruled that, actually—

MICHAEL MOORE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —the British Parliament has to vote on this.

MICHAEL MOORE: Yes, right. So maybe—maybe there is a way out for them. But on Tuesday, we’re not voting to leave Europe. You know, if you vote for Donald J. Trump, you’re essentially voting for America to leave America. You know, we’re asking—you’re basically saying, “You know what? We want to leave behind whatever this is that we have, and just start over, with him in charge, you know, with him as the builder of this.” And, to me, that’s just a frightening thought.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll have more Michael Moore in a minute.

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