Actor and director Rob Reiner was once best known to America's TV audiences as "Meathead," the young liberal who riled up Archie Bunker on "All in the Family."
Today, Reiner is still riling others up with his liberal politics – as an activist for same-sex marriage in California and campaigning for the likes of Al Gore and Howard Dean.
His latest lefty comments, however, may catch some by surprise.
Appearing on Larry King's Russia Today television program, "Politicking with Larry King," Thursday night, Reiner compared the tea-party movement to the terrorist organization Hamas, claiming there's only one way to deal with such "extremist" groups: You have to "eliminate" them.
During a discussion about the Gaza Strip, Reiner explained "you can't negotiate" with "an extreme faction" like Hamas, which has pledged "the destruction of every Jew on the planet." Instead, he said, you have to make sure a group like that "goes away."
He likened his solution to dealing with the tea party.
"You look at the Congress right now in the United States. You've got a strong tea-party group controlling the whole country, because they have a gridlock, they have a gridlock stranglehold on [Republican House Speaker John] Boehner," Reiner said. "Boehner can't make a move, and so for that reason, nothing gets brought up in the Congress.
"So anytime you're dealing with an extreme group, you cannot negotiate with them, and the way to do it is to eliminate it," said Reiner. "With the tea party, you have to go through a political thing; you have to wait till 2020 to redistrict, but, uh, that is really tough stuff."
Watch video of the interview below:
Since his days as "Meathead," Reiner has gone on to become a highly successful director of such films as "Stand By Me," "The Princess Bride," "When Harry Met Sally" and "A Few Good Men."
Hamas is an Islamist faction operating in the Middle East and using Gaza as a base for attacks on Israel. It was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997.
The tea party is a grassroots American political movement that emerged in 2010, largely in opposition to Obamacare, but has also enveloped advocacy for fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and a return to the U.S. Constitution.