Clint Eastwood Says Electing Michael Bloomberg Is "the Best Thing We Could Do"

'The Mule' actor also said he wished President Trump acted "in a more genteel way" and stopped "calling people names." by Katie Kilkenny, The Hollywood Reporter..Seemingly undeterred by the withering reviews out of the former New York City mayor's first appearance at a Democratic debate, Clint Eastwood is expressing some early support for Michael Bloomberg for president.

Asked about his views on President Donald Trump and the current political scene in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, The Mule actor and self-professed libertarian said "The politics has gotten so ornery.” While he said he agrees with “certain things that Trump’s done," he added that he wished the president acted “in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level."

He then told the reporter, "The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there."

Eastwood, who has historically leaned conservative on the political spectrum, famously criticized former President Barack Obama and once served as the Republican mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea between 1986 and 1988. During a speech in August 2016, he appeared to express his plans to vote for Trump, saying, "I’d have to go for Trump… you know, ’cause [Hillary’s] declared that she’s gonna follow in Obama’s footsteps.”

Above: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg 2006 National Board of Review awards, Best Film – Letters from Iwo Jima

The actor-director also took the opportunity of his latest interview to clarify his position on a controversy over the depiction of a female journalist in his latest film, The Ballad of Richard Jewell. In the film, written by Billy Ray and based off of a Vanity Fair story by Marie Brenner and book by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs is portrayed as having exchanged sex for the name of a bomb suspect (Jewell, who was falsely accused) with an FBI agent. The AJC has publicly denied that this portrayal contains any truth; Scruggs died in 2001.

Eastwood told the WSJ that the AJC was "ultimately responsible" for Jewell's early death at age 44 in 2007 (Jewell died due to heart failure after complications from diabetes). He added of the film's portrayal of Scruggs, “Well, she hung out at a little bar in town, where mostly police officers went. And she had a boyfriend that was a police officer. Well, we just changed it in the story. We made it a federal police officer instead of a local."

Actor Olivia Wilde, who portrayed Scruggs in the film, said of her role to The Hollywood Reporter in December: "I have an immense amount of respect for Kathy Scruggs." She added, "She’s no longer with us, she died very young, and I feel a certain responsibility to defend her legacy — which has now been, I think unfairly, boiled down to one element of her personality, one inferred moment in the film."

As for AJC's fierce rebukes of the portrayal of Scruggs in the film, Eastwood said the publication was working to erase its "guilt" due to a "reckless story" naming Jewell. He added that he wished Warner Bros., which produced the film, had told AJC to "go screw themselves."