A Hollywood Legend Talks Politics; Actor-director Clint Eastwood, 89, weighs in on Bloomberg, Trump, #MeToo and the dispute over a reporter's depiction in his latest film.

Wall Street Journal ^ | Feb. 21, 2020 1:56 pm ET | Tunku Varadarajan

[Zhang Fei]

The Hollywood actor and director was staying at a hotel owned by Steve Wynn, the casino billionaire. "Steve called me up in the room and said, 'Do you want to go play golf? We're going out with Trump.' I said, 'Who?' and Steve said, 'Trump. You know Trump?' "

So Messrs. Eastwood and Wynn ventured out for a morning on the course with Donald Trump. "It was funny," Mr. Eastwood says, "because every time I was together with Steve"—with the future president out of earshot—"he would say, 'You know, Trump is doing those damn casinos. He's going to lose his ass.' " And when Mr. Wynn couldn't hear, "Trump would say, 'You know, Steve is going to do this big hotel. He's going to land right on his ass. There are too many hotels now.' "

Back and forth the dissing went for hours, Mr. Eastwood recalls: "Together, they were great friends, but separately they were giving each other a hard time. I don't know how much tongue-in-cheek was in all of that, but it was very amusing for me, the lone guy."

Mr. Eastwood relates this story over a frugal lunch, in response to my asking for his thoughts on Mr. Trump.

As for the domestic political scene, Mr. Eastwood seems disheartened. "The politics has gotten so ornery," he says, hunching his shoulders in resignation. He approves of "certain things that Trump's done" but wishes the president 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." As he drives me back to my hotel, he expresses an affinity for another former mayor: "The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there."

[DHerion]

I suspect Eastwood’s endorsement is a little operation chaos...

[Zhang Fei]

[The problem with all of these articles is that it is based on the same single quote about Bloomberg being “in there” which could mean being in the race to have another option for democrat voters to consider or being in the White House. These liberals writing the articles are clearly spinning it as anti-Trump, which may be the exact opposite intent by Eastwood who otherwise speaks well of Trump.]

---

Regardless, I bet Bloomberg’s people are on the phone with Eastwood trying to verify whether this is in fact an endorsement, which they might eventually use in one of his long-winded ads. Best thing for Bloomberg would be if Eastwood cuts an ad the way Michael Douglas did. Of course, the Democrats are gonna double down on their basic theme re Bloomberg’s candidacy - what the heck is this Republican doing on the same stage; isn’t this the Democratic primary?

[EdnaMode]

Bush didn’t fight back. Led to a terrible approval rating at the end of his presidency and Obama being elected.

McCain didn’t fight against Obama, leading to an easy Obama win.

Romney didn’t fight against Obama and lost an election he should have won.

All three were called Nazi’s despite being polite. I’ll take Trump fighting back any day!

[DoughtyOne]

Yep, you're right on target with those comments > IMO.

Playing Mr. Nice guy has earned us nothing but contempt.

Part of the reason Trump gets what he is getting today, is because the
Left had assumed it was beyond resistance. They thought they could pull
any shenanigans they wanted, and no one would say a word.

Trump was as sick of that as we are. He felt compelled to run. He's
been standing up for what's right since.

[DoughtyOne]

d":^)

TRUMP PENCE
~~~~~~~~~~~
 2020 2020

[DoughtyOne]

d":^)

TRUMP PENCE
~~~~~~~~~~~
 2020 2020

[DoughtyOne]

Could be...

[Syncro]

Trumps Twitter audience is larger than the combined audience of the MSM!

*****************************************

I love that stat!

So they would not report anything positive about Trump so he went to twitter to report it himself.

Millions of ppl stopped watching the abcnbccbscnnmsnbc fake news and went to twitter to see news about Trump.

So the MSN gloated to themselves that no one would EVER see any positive news about Trump because they wouldn’t report on it.

Ha ha lol good try, they lost BILLIONS in advertising dollars and Trump news got out even BETTER than if MSN would have reported it.

Not tired of winning...heh.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The reality is that tho the WSJ Editorial Board is not NEVER Trump, it does not particularly like him.

Its enthusiasm for restriction on immigration is, shall we say, limited, and that IMHO is half of it.

I haven’t detected any hoplophobia in their editorials (or, obviously, in Clint Eastwood either) tho - and Bloomberg is famously hostile to 2A.

[Syncro]

True or false...

[Syncro]

False