Who Knew Donald Trump & Jerry Maguire Had So Much In Common? Brian Williams, Apparently

After weeks of mostly silence from former President Donald Trump, it seems he’s trying to get back into the media spotlight. But MSNBC’s Brian Williams (allegedly) used the opportunity to poke fun at Trump’s meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy at the Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach on Thursday, where the two apparently met to discuss winning the House majority in the 2022 midterms. 

Instead of cutting to footage of their very important political meeting, Williams "accidentally" rolled a scene from the movie Jerry Maguire. Williams told his guests, comedian Baratunde Thurston and conservative pundit Bill Kristol, they were about to see “what I’m told is the first exclusive video out of this meeting today between McCarthy and Trump.” He added, “We’ll watch it and react on the other side.” 

What happened next was a delightful troll of the former president, who loves media attention but doesn’t like to be the butt of the joke. Williams went on to air a clip from the 1996 classic, during which Tom Cruise’s character tells Renée Zellweger's, “You complete me.” Zellweger responds through tears, “Shut up. You had me at hello. You had me at hello.” 

“Obviously we have rolled the wrong clip,” said Williams. “We were sold a bill of goods here,” he added. “I thought this was going to be of the McCarthy and Trump meeting and someone’s gonna be, of course, in big trouble.” In truth, the clip that aired on MSNBC was probably pretty close to what actually went down. Williams then went on to continue poking fun at the meeting, and suggested that McCarthy is perhaps a bit of a Trump sycophant, because he went “down to kiss the ring, and God knows what else, meeting with the deposed former president in his underdecorated Florida home." Ouch.

The actual clip, which would have been far less entertaining, was supposed to show Trump and McCarthy’s meeting to discuss electing Republicans to the House and Senate in 2022. The former president used the opportunity to talk himself up, as his Political Action Committee Save America said in a statement that his “popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time." Of course that couldn't be farther from the truth — Trump left office with a 57.9% disapproval rating.

McCarthy’s visit with Trump comes three weeks after the former president incited a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. He will face an impeachment trial starting next month to determine whether he should ever be allowed to hold federal office again. The fall-out from the attempted coup has resulted in a rift within the Republican Party, as ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump and all but five Republican senators voted that a trial would be unconstitutional. 

In any case, Brian Williams appears to be having a good time discussing the former president's whereabouts. Perhaps in his next segment we will see a clip of The Notebook in place of Trump's meeting with Rudy Giuliani to discuss the upcoming Senate impeachment trial.