Liberal actor Jeff Daniels plays President Ronald Reagan in the movie The Brink of War about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, but during a promotional interview with CBS Saturday Morning, he appeared to have completely missed the point of the story. According to him, the key takeaway is that we should all aspire to the amoral hippie-ism of John Lennon, “We’re all one person. We are all one world. You know, John Lennon wasn't wrong in his song ‘Imagine.’”
Co-host and interviewer Kelly O’Grady asked Daniel and co-star Jared Harris, who plays Mikhail Gorbachev, “This film arrives at a time when there are a lot of high-stakes negotiations happening around the world. If a world leader were to watch this, what would you want them to take away?”
Actor Jeff Daniels, who is playing Ronald Reagan in "The Brink of War" about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, appears to have missed the point, telling CBS, "We’re all one person. We are all one world. You know, John Lennon wasn't wrong in his song 'Imagine.' I hope world leaders,… pic.twitter.com/gEPuGVHyGC
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) August 15, 2026
Harris responded with broad generalities, “You know, you think about why these two people, the heads of these two countries, chose to meet in person and you realize it is all personal. You know, you have to sit down with the opposing leader and see if you can form a relationship.”
Daniels, however, tried to get philosophical, “We’re all one person. We are all one world. You know, John Lennon wasn't wrong in his song ‘Imagine.’ I hope world leaders, plural, from all around the world will see it and, as Jared said, get in the room and talk about—and maybe we can learn something from what two great leaders did back in 1986.
Of course, the Reykjavik summit did not occur in a vacuum. It came after years of “Peace through Strength” policies and ended without an agreement because Reagan refused to compromise on the Strategic Defense Initiative. The real lesson of Reykjavik and its subsequent nuclear arms reduction agreements is therefore to compromise where you can, but stand firm where you can’t, and that it helps to enter high-stakes geopolitical and arms control summits from a position of strength. It is not to “Imagine” an anti-human world without private property, countries, or religions, which either sounds like communism or a world that believes in nothing.
Back in studio, O’Grady wrapped up the whole interview by claiming, “The thing I find so interesting is at the time this was considered a failure. They walked away. They were very frustrated with each other, but it was later. That was the thing that made it possible to get to an agreement, and I love what Daniels said there, it’s just finding that groundwork. Hey, we are actually just two humans.”
Daniels’s misdiagnosis does not mean that The Brink of War will be a bad movie or that it is an injustice to the real Reagan. However, it does mean that people risk taking the wrong lessons from it, and that could have dangerous consequences for today’s foreign policy.
Here is a transcript for the August 15 show:
CBS Saturday Morning
8/15/2026
8:16 AM ET
KELLY O’GRADY: This film arrives at a time when there are a lot of high-stakes negotiations happening around the world. If a world leader were to watch this, what would you want them to take away?
JARED HARRIS: You know, you think about why these two people, the heads of these two countries, chose to meet in person and you realize it is all personal. You know, you have to sit down with the opposing leader and see if you can form a relationship.
JEFF DANIELS: We’re all one person. We are all one world. You know, John Lennon wasn't wrong in his song “Imagine.” I hope world leaders, plural, from all around the world will see it and, as Jared said, get in the room and talk about—and maybe we can learn something from what two great leaders did back in 1986.
O’GRADY [In Studio]: The thing I find so interesting is at the time this was considered a failure. They walked away. They were very frustrated with each other, but it was later. That was the thing that made it possible to get to an agreement, and I love what Daniels said there, it’s just finding that groundwork. Hey, we are actually just two humans.
