Jeff Daniels Laments that CNN Did Not Exist During Tense Reagan-Gorbachev Summit… But It Did
Jeff Daniels Laments that CNN Did Not Exist During Tense Reagan-Gorbachev Summit… But It Did
Sean JamesSat, August 15, 2026 at 7:31 PM UTC
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Maybe he didn’t have cable back then?
Actor Jeff Daniels declared during a Friday night interview on CNN the world was a more innocent place 40 years ago, because 24-hour news channels and social media did not exist to constantly tell Americans about blood pressure-raising news, like the U.S. and Soviet Union pointing thousands of missiles at one another.
Except one thing: CNN did exist in 1986.
Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980, and the channel was in about 33.5 million U.S. households by ’86 — which was roughly 41% of all American homes with TVs at the time.
Daniels’ error isn’t a big deal — although it is kind of funny, considering he played a cable news anchor for several years on HBO’s The Newsroom — but it did stand out during his interview with Laura Coates.
The Dumb & Dumber star joined the program to talk about the 1986 Reykjavík Summit between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, where the two started talks about nuclear disarmament. Daniels portrayed Reagan in The Brink of War, which is a new flick about the summit.
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“As divided as the country is, as the world is, it was that dangerous and that divided back then. We just weren’t as aware of it back then,” Daniels said. “We didn’t have a CNN, we didn’t have social media telling us everything that was going on.”
Daniels continued, saying he certainly had no idea the USA and USSR had 70,000 warheads aimed at each other. “It was a dangerous time,” Daniels said.
The disarmament talks fell apart at the last minute at the Reykjavík Summit, but the meeting set the foundation for more fruitful talks between Reagan and Gorbachev soon after. Daniels — who slammed President Donald Trump for his infamous October AI feces-dropping video — said the summit makes him optimistic about the future, despite how rough things can look at times.
“They got together in a room and they tried to find a way to find some common ground, to find a way to get the world into a safer place for everyone,” Daniels said. “And if the leaders of today all around the world were to do that, versus ratcheting up the nuclear weapons and as many countries as possible can get them — if these two guys could do it, it’s not out of the question that the leaders of today could do it. So you have to hope for that.”
Watch above.
The post Jeff Daniels Laments that CNN Did Not Exist During Tense Reagan-Gorbachev Summit… But It Did first appeared on Mediaite.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
