Actor Alec Baldwin has made headlines for all the wrong reasons lately after a series of Twitter rants, during which he has accused President Trump of being a tyrant and accused Trump supporters of racism.
On Thursday morning, a little more than a week after his rant, he was arrested for the alleged assault and battery of a man who jumped in front of a limousine that Baldwin was driving.
The comedian, who was arrested on Jan. 2 in New York City, was released from police custody later in the morning.
During a press conference on Thursday afternoon, he denied all the charges.
“I will not be held back from this institution,” he said. “I will not use this platform to attack the president or anyone in the government. And I will not allow others to dictate how I get my message out.”
In a series of tweets Friday morning, Baldwin said that the news media needed to be a little more careful in its coverage of the past few days:
He has repeatedly denied using his Trump impersonation, which he said he gave to cast him as an embattled actor, as a way to get out of trouble. But there are reports that he went to the police Thursday morning after getting into a road rage incident.
“I would never point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never,” he said. “That’s not me. I don’t do that.”
He was accused of pushing a man in the scuffle that led to his arrest.
As for Friday’s news conference, he said that he has three children to protect.
“As a father who is an actor,” he said, “I know what the good guys get up to. And what’s it like to be a guy who sometimes puts your life in danger when you go out for an adventure or get into a car and suddenly the car doesn’t want to go anywhere?”
Asked about Trump, Baldwin said it’s funny how people have tried to label him for his performance.
“This is like the great equalizer here,” he said. “‘Oh, we can divide ourselves into two camps, liberal and conservative.’”
“Maybe Alec Baldwin or Trump supporters or anybody in the administration should make it stop,” he said. “We should show that we are one country. I mean, it’s astounding, how divided this country is.”
Baldwin described himself as a “very introverted, quite a reserved person,” adding that when he’s not acting, he’s often sitting in his bedroom. He said he spends about an hour each day on Twitter.
Baldwin ended his interview by answering a question he said “sounds reasonable,” but which he doesn’t understand: why anyone should take his tweets seriously.
“I don’t think you should take my tweets seriously, and the people who do, they should drop it,” he said. “Because you can’t possibly follow all the tweets about Donald Trump, and that’s an oversimplification. And you can only listen to a couple of the tweets in a day.”
And if he’s ever in a situation where he has to use his guns?
“I would not point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never.”