Dwayne Johnson will not endorse any presidential candidate this year, he confirmed during an interview with Fox News. It’s a change of pace for the celebrity, who publicly endorsed Joe Biden for president during the 2020 election.
“The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was one I thought was the best decision for me at that time,” Johnson said. “I thought, ‘I’m in this position where I have some influence and I felt it was my job then to exercise my influence [and] share: This is who I’m going to endorse.’ I’m not going to do that. I was then, the most followed man in the world, 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 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 will not do that. My goal is to bring this country together. I believe in that. There will be no endorsement. At this level of influence, I will keep my politics to myself. It is between me and the ballot box. But I will tell you this: Like a lot of us out there, not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people and whoever they vote for that is my president and who I will support 100 percent.”
Fox News’ Will Cain asked Johnson if he was happy with the state of America, to which Johnson answered: “No.”
“Today’s cancel culture, woke culture, division, etc — that really bugs me,” Johnson said. “In the spirit of that, you either succumb to that and be what other people want you to be, or you be yourself and be real … and that might 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 idea 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 love being a daddy and that’s the most important thing to me is being a daddy, number one, especially during this time, this critical time in my daughters’ lives.”
“With my 22-year-old daughter, Simone, we like to say that we grew up together,” Johnson said on Trevor Noah’s Spotify podcast “What Now?” last year. “I know what it’s like to be in an occupation that took me away. As a pro wrestler full-time, I was wrestling 230 dates a year for years as she came into the world. So I know what it’s like to have that separation and not be there for the birthdays, for the pickups, the drop-offs, and everything else. And I don’t want that for my little ones now.”
On the same 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 was really moved by that,” Johnson said. “I was really blown away and I was really honored. I’ll share this little bit with you: At the end of the year in 2022, I got a visit from the parties asking me if I was going to run, and if I could run.”
“It was a big deal, and it came out of the blue,” Johnson continued. “It was one after the other, and they brought up that poll, and they also brought up their own deep-dive research that would prove that should 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 a lot about politics that I hate.”
Watch Johnson’s full interview with Fox News in the video below.
From Variety US