by Frank Holmes, reporter
Hollywood superstar Matthew McConaughey has been in his fair share of rumors over the years, but now he finds himself swirling at the center of a political controversy: McConaughey has said he’s open to running for political office, and his loyal fans think that’s “alright, alright, alright.”
McConaughey started the internet rumor mill spinning with his appearance on the conservative “Hugh Hewitt Show,” where he said he might consider running for governor of his home state of Texas.
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“That wouldn’t be up to me. It would be up to the people more than it would me,” McConaughey said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, would be up for reelection in 2022. If Abbott bowed out, McConaughey could show the Democrats how to lose an election in 10 days.
The Dazed and Confused star has never publicly stated what political party he belongs to, but he’s long been suspected of being one of Tinsel Town’s closet conservatives.
The 50-year-old actor has made no bones about the fact that he’s a Christian. “There’s a lot of great truths that come out of the Bible,” he told conservative-leaning podcaster Joe Rogan.
He’s also called himself “a proud, patriotic American,” And he told left-wing Hollywood to drop its Resistance act four years ago. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, McConaughey told his fellow Hollywood stars that, since “he’s our president now,” they should “must embrace, shake hands with this fact and be constructive with him over the next four years.”
The award-winning actor has also spoken out against cancel culture. “We’re making people personae non gratae because of something they do that is right now deemed wrong or it’s the hot point in a hot topic,” he told Rogan.
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“You can’t erase someone’s entire existence,” he continued. “Where the heck does some forgiveness go?”
McConaughey may have also given a hint about his political leanings when he told Joe Rogan that some leftists come off as “condescending and patronizing to 50 percent of the world.” Instead, “the liberal side” should show “empathy” to conservatives.
In the same interview, he stuck up for police officers—although he said bad cops should be fired and “replaced.” But defunding the police won’t “rehabilitate” the “relationship between the community and the police force,” he said.
He seemed to imagine himself as a police officer, straining under the stress of the job as he told Rogan what he would say to his community if he were a cop: “Can y’all remember and understand our point of view, that we’re like the tow truck driver? We’re not called when there’s good news; we’re called when it’s bad news. So we’re coming in looking for trouble, alright? So we’re already under stress, even if we get a call. So can y’all help us in our way that we communicate? Can we get trust again that, if a cop says, ‘Hey, stand still, take your hands out of your pocket, hold ’em up,’ … that something’s not gonna happen to us that shouldn’t?’”
McConaughey wouldn’t be the first actor to make a splash in politics. Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even Donald Trump starred for years on the TV show The Apprentice.
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But it looks like his political career may have a Failure to Launch—at least for the moment. McConaughey followed up his Hewitt appearance by telling Stephen Colbert, “I have no plans to (run for office) right now.” He said he’d serve in “whatever leadership role I could be most useful in—and I don’t know that that’s politics.”
He previously said that “politics seems to be a broken business to me right now.” But “when politics redefines its purpose, I could be a hell of a lot more interested.”
But he’ll throw his hat in the ring when he knows it’s a Time to Kill.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”