To him, it’s no laughing matter
Tom Arnold takes his Viceland show on the search for tapes of Trump personally.
Tom Arnold shows outrage as he goes on “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes,” saying he won’t let up.
The Television Critics Assn. summer tour took a sharp and strange turn Thursday when Tom Arnold took the stage to promote his new Viceland series, “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes,” which premieres Sept. 18.
Perhaps unexpected was Arnold’s level of earnest outrage at the current political reality. The comic and writer has built a career on being a sort of genial goof since first rising to fame with his headline-grabbing 1990-94 marriage to Roseanne Barr and subsequent comic efforts.
Asked whether his series, which follows his citizen journalism crusade to find alleged tapes of Donald Trump behaving badly, would have any effect on the opinion of the president’s fan base, which appears to forgive every controversy and misstep, Arnold was not in a joking mood.
“I don’t [care] about the 40%,” he said flatly. “I’m going to do this until he resigns. He is a crazy person. He is putting our country on the precipice of a war right now. There are things going on right now that affect our world that are scary, and I, for some reason, am in a position to do something that’s working.”
With a fervor that spoke to his feelings on the project, Arnold called out “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett for his relationship with Trump and what he described as alleged incidents that lie waiting to be discovered from that reality show’s cutting room floor.
Arnold spoke at a rapidfire pace peppered with asides and incomplete thoughts, his voice quickening as he went on before finally catching himself.
“Anyways, it’s a comedy,” he concluded dryly.
The comment drew a collective laugh and breath from the transfixed journalists.
But as talkative as Arnold was throughout the panel, which veered from Burnett to Russian money laundering to “Shark Tank” host and frequent Trump foe Mark Cuban, he wouldn’t take the bait and speak about his ex-wife Barr and her support for Trump.
When asked about how she might react to his show, he responded with a curt, “I have no idea … I don’t know, we haven’t been married for 24 years.”
Arnold described his efforts on “Hunt for the Trump Tapes” as “personal,” and he said that his previous relationship with Trump before he became president was something he needed to “own.” Over the course of the series, the show searches for multiple alleged tapes, which executive producer Jonathan Karsh said included events at the Miss Universe pageant and Trump’s appearances on Howard Stern’s radio show.
The comedian and his producers described the show’s work with journalists and legal consultants to ensure that, despite its socalled comedic investigation tag, whatever truth is found will be revealed “for the good of the country.”