MSNBC’s Brian Williams expertly trolled Donald Trump on The 11th Hour, mocking the former president’s meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) at Mar-a-Lago. Williams promised his guests that he had “exclusive” video from the meeting, only to “accidentally” roll a clip from the 1996 film Jerry Maguire. Yes, the “you had me at hello” scene.
Someone PLEASE TELL ME what happened tonight on @11thHour with Brian Williams! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/VjzwMPbtt2
— Douglass Sloan (@DougSloan) January 29, 2021
Trump’s Save America political action committee said in a press release on Thursday, shortly before The 11th Hour aired, that Trump had pledged to help McCarthy and the GOP regain control of the House of Representatives in 2022. The PAC said that Trump and McCarthy had a “very good and cordial meeting” at Mar-a-Lago. Williams’ implication with the Jerry Maguire clip was that Trump and McCarthy spent their time professing their love for one another like Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger‘s characters.
After watching the emotional “you complete me, you had me at hello” scene, Williams deadpanned, “Obviously we have rolled the wrong clip. I thought this was going to be of the McCarthy and Trump meeting and someone’s gonna be, of course, in big trouble.” His guests, conservative pundit Bill Kristol and comedian Baratunde Thurston, couldn’t stop giggling. Thurston couldn’t answer a followup question because he was “still recovering” from the clip. “I’m mad at you right now for making me break so much,” he told Williams.
Williams is one of Trump’s staunchest critics. Williams used to begin every episode of The 11th Hour by indicating the amount of time Trump had been president and the days until the 2020 election. It was a back and forth. Trump called Williams “dumb as hell” on Twitter in April 2020 and said that he “wouldn’t know the truth if it was nailed to his wooden forehead” — presumably because Williams had criticized his response to the COVID-19 pandemic on his show.