Dwayne Johnson won’t endorse any presidential candidate this 12 months, he confirmed during an interview with Fox News. It’s a change of pace for the celebrity, who publicly endorsed Joe Biden for president through the 2020 election.
“The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was one I assumed was the perfect decision for me at the moment,” Johnson said. “I assumed, ‘I’m on this position where I actually have some influence and I felt it was my job then to exercise my influence [and] share: That is who I’m going to endorse.’ I’m not going to do this. I used to be then, probably the most followed man on the earth, and am today, and I appreciate that… but what that caused was something that tears me up in my guts — which is division. That got me. I didn’t realize that then, I just felt like there was quite a lot of unrest and I’d like things to calm down.”
Johnson continued, “The takeaway after that was it caused an incredible amount of division. I realize now going into this election, I won’t do this. My goal is to bring this country together. I imagine in that. There can be no endorsement. At this level of influence, I’ll keep my politics to myself. It’s between me and the ballot box. But I’ll inform you this: Like quite a lot of us on the market, not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people and whoever they vote for that’s my president and who I’ll support one hundred pc.”
Fox News’ Will Cain asked Johnson if he was joyful with the state of America, to which Johnson answered: “No.”
“Today’s cancel culture, woke culture, division, etc — that actually bugs me,” Johnson said. “Within the spirit of that, you either succumb to that and be what other people want you to be, otherwise you be yourself and be real … and that may make people upset and piss people off, and that’s okay.”
Johnson also said he’s still not interesting in running for president himself, explaining: “No, that’s not my intention. I’m not a politician.”
Johnson first floated the thought of running for president back in 2017, when he exclusively told Variety that it was a “realistic consideration” for 2024. In a 2022 interview on “CBS Mornings,” he said a presidential run was “off the table” because “I really like being a daddy and that’s crucial thing to me is being a daddy, primary, especially during this time, this critical time in my daughters’ lives.”
“With my 22-year-old daughter, Simone, we prefer to say that we grew up together,” Johnson said on Trevor Noah’s Spotify podcast “What Now?” last 12 months. “I do know what it’s prefer to be in an occupation that took me away. As a professional wrestler full-time, I used to be wrestling 230 dates a 12 months for years as she got here into the world. So I do know what it’s prefer to have that separation and never be there for the birthdays, for the pickups, the drop-offs, and every part else. And I don’t want that for my little ones now.”
On the identical podcast, Johnson revealed that several political parties approached him in 2022 to ask if he would run for president after Noah mentioned that a 2021 political poll claimed 46% of U.S. adults would support Johnson’s campaign for president.
“That was an interesting poll that happened and I used to be really moved by that,” Johnson said. “I used to be really blown away and I used to be really honored. I’ll share this little bit with you: At the tip of the 12 months in 2022, I got a visit from the parties asking me if I used to be going to run, and if I could run.”
“It was an enormous deal, and it got here out of the blue,” Johnson continued. “It was one after the opposite, and so they brought up that poll, and additionally they brought up their very own deep-dive research that may prove that ought to I ever go down that road [I’d be a real contender]. It was all very surreal because that’s never been my goal. My goal has never been to be in politics. As a matter of fact, there’s so much about politics that I hate.”
Watch Johnson’s full interview with Fox News within the video below.
