Appearing as a guest on Friday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, actor Jeff Daniels -- who stars as Will McAvoy in HBO's The Newsroom -- admitted that he agrees with a now infamous speech delivered by his character -- and written by liberal writer/producer Aaron Sorkin -- in which McAvoy rants that "America is not the greatest country in the world anymore."
After running a partial clip of the speech, host Piers Morgan praised the writing as a "great speech," and posed the question: "When you said it, did you believe it yourself?"
Sitting alongside Sorkin who was also a guest, Daniels recalled the first time he saw the line after the liberal producer wrote it:
And I remember reading it, going, "You may not like it, you may disagree with it, you know, for those who are patriotic and wave the flag and don't want to hear it, but there's nothing in it that's not true."
And that, and all of it, each phrase, each thing that Aaron has Will say, it's all true. I'm sorry to tell you, but it's true. So that really resonated with me, and, to be able to say that, to be able to take words like the way this guy can put them together and throw it at the lens, throw it at an audience, it's, for an actor, it's gold.
-- Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center