Former child actor and Donald Trump supporter Scott Baio calls himself an "independent" conservative, but he's got the list of right wing Republican extremists' grievances down pat. Here he is on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, explaining to her why he supports Trump and basically sounding a lot like these so-called "tea party" Republicans who all want us to believe that the real problem with their party is that they haven't obstructed this president quite enough, shut down the government enough times and that their agenda isn't quite far enough to the right.
Any and all compromise with the other party is seen as an act of treason and any bipartisanship, for any reason, like passing a budget or keeping the government open is seen as weakness and betrayal.
You've also gotta' love him explaining how Trump is a "straight shooter" and speaks to him in a way that he can understand, or in other words, like a fifth grader.
BARTIROMO: Tell me first what's behind it. Why do you think he's your guy?
BAIO: Well, I like his proposals on reforming the tax code, building the wall on immigration, repealing Obamacare, dropping the corporate tax rate down to bring some of that money back out of the country back into the country. I think he's a straight shooter when he talks to me... when he talks, I understand him.
I know, it's sort of like the way you and I grew up. It's a very sort of direct language which I don't need a political decoder ring to understand what the guy is saying. And I think most importantly Maria for me, and I'm not discounting Ted Cruz or John Kasich, and I like them both, but Donald Trump is the only guy I think that has the will and the nerve to attack and to fight and to fight back, because we have this mentality.
The Republican Party, which I try not to associate myself with anymore because I think they’re very untrustworthy on almost every issue, they... we always seem to have this mentality... they seem to have this mentality that they don’t want to get down in the dirt. They want to be above the fray and because they want to be perceived as nice and they get killed. So on a certain point...
BARTIROMO: And then nothing gets done.
BAIO: Nothing gets done and they lose elections because they don’t want to get... they don't want to fight. When you fight, you fight to win. And they don’t ever want to fight. And I can’t understand it.
BARTIROMO: You know, it's interesting, because the way you're speaking, you seem to be the exact person, I mean, that is the mentality of the support behind Donald Trump. You were a conservative, or a Republican, however you want to say it, but then you became alienated because you were getting rolled over. Like so many others within the party who felt like they believed the establishment and then they never really saw anything impact their lives that they thought they were going to see.
BAIO: Maria, I consider myself a conservative independent now.
BARTIROMO: Yeah.
BAIO: And listen, it's been by their own doing. Give us the House and we can stop certain things. Okay, in 2010 they get the House. Well, we really need the Senate and we'll stop everything.
And his blathering didn't get any better from there. Fox pretends to hate Hollywood, unless of course the actor is someone on the right who is willing to bash President Obama and push the Overton window to the right. Then they love them.
