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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.
By Tunku Varadarajan
Feb. 21, 2020
‘Many years ago,” Clint Eastwood says—drawing close to me as if to share a secret—“I was in Las Vegas.” 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. We’re seated outdoors at the Tehama Golf Club, which he owns, with views of Carmel Valley and the Monterey Peninsula, among the most expensive slivers of real estate in America.
Mr. Eastwood, 89, has never fought shy of politics himself. Like Mr. Trump, he’s even held political office, albeit on a local scale: He won election as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1986. He’s known as a Hollywood conservative, but his appeal was bipartisan. He chose to run, he says, because the incumbent mayor “had gotten to be too distant” from the townsfolk. “She used to knit during public meetings.”
Mr. Eastwood describes himself as a libertarian—“somebody who has respect for other people’s ideas and is willing to learn constantly.” He is, he says, always in “a state of evolution,” and he comes across in conversation as much more nuanced than the hypermasculine roles he’s played in films from “Dirty Harry” (1971) to “Gran Torino”
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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.”(2008).
wsj.com/articles/a-hollywood-legend-talks-politics-11582311359
