Clint Eastwood backs Mike Bloomberg? The legendary actor-director and longtime Republican campaigner has applauded President Trump for “certain things” he’s done and told the Wall Street Journal that “the best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there.”
“The politics has gotten so ornery,” the five-time Oscar-winner said in the wide ranging WSJ interview. Eastwood says he wished President Trump would act “in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level.”
It’s perhaps the first time that the Dirty Harry star and Richard Jewel director has publicly scolded the president he has long-praised.
In an interview with Extra in December 2015, Clint Eastwood said voters were “looking for somebody who is outspoken and who isn’t afraid” and said Donald Trump “seems to have kind of a fearless attitude.” After praising then-Republican frontrunner Ben Carson, Eastwood declared “anyone of them would be better than” Barack Obama.
Again lauding Trump’s willingness to say “what’s on his mind,” Eastwood told Esquire in August 2016 that we’re in a “kiss-ass generation … a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells.”
“He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides,” Eastwood continued of Trump. “But everybody —the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just fucking get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”
The bombastic temperament Donald Trump displayed as a candidate has apparently turned Eastwood off now that he’s president.
Elsewhere, the Sully helmer told the Journal that the “#MeToo generation has its points,” applauded women who “are standing up against people who are trying to shake you down for sexual favors,” and recounted that sexual predation in Hollywood “was very prolific back in the 1940s and ’50s … and the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s . . .”
He likens that fear to the mood in America now and cites the #MeToo movement. “The #MeToo generation has its points,” he acknowledges. He appreciates that women “are standing up against people who are trying to shake you down for sexual favors.” Sexual predation, he says, has been in the movie business since the days he started as a bit-part actor. “It was very prolific back in the 1940s and ’50s.” He pauses then wryly adds, “And the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s . . .”
Eastwood also expressed concerns that the “presumption of innocence, not only in law, but in philosophy,” has been lost over sexual allegations. He named disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey [Weinstein] as one reason people are so “on the defensive.”
Eastwood also addressed the accusations leveled by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) that he inaccurately portrayed it’s reporting during and after the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta, Georgia, in his latest feature film Richard jewell.
The director told the Journal that AJC had “guilt” over it’s “reckless story” that led to the months-long persecution of Richard Jewel, the 34-year-old security guard who discovered a suspicious package saved countless lives evacuating the area before the bomb detonated.
The paper’s executives, Eastwood said, could “go screw themselves.”
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the bestselling book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter and Instagram @jeromeehudson
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