Clint Eastwood has some words of advice for people who accuse Donald Trump of being a racist: get over it.
In an interview with Esquire, Eastwood, 86, lashed out against so-called “political correctness” and praised the Republican nominee for his improvised and unfiltered approach to delivering stump speeches.
“[Trump is] onto something, because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,” Eastwood said in the Wednesday interview. “That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a p*ssy generation.
He continued: “We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist.”
Eastwood was born in 1930, at the height of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation and were mostly enforced in the US South, but were still present in states like California, where the actor is from.
He stopped short of endorsing either Mr Trump or Hillary Clinton in the interview, but said that both candidates have certainly said “dumb things”.
“You know, he’s a racist now because he’s talked about this judge,” he said, referring to Mr Trump’s comments made in June about Indiana-borne Judge Gonzalo Curiel presiding over the Trump University lawsuit.
“He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. … But everybody – the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist’, and their making a big hoodoo out of it.
“Just f**king get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”
Still, if he had to choose, Eastwood said he would “have to go for Trump”.
Eastwood became the focus of ridicule when he appeared at the 2012 Republican National Convention and spoke to an imaginary Barack Obama in a chair beside him. But he admitted the stunt was “silly at the time”.
