Movie icon Clint Eastwood reiterated his call for Mitt Romney to win the presidency during a new interview in which he defended his Republican National Convention performance as an appeal to swing voters.
“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Carmel Pine Cone (Calif.) in an interview published today. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know.”
Eastwood, whose performance was panned by the media, brushed off the criticism. “I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle,” he explained, adding that he didn’t want to give a scripted speech.
He succeeded, a post-convention poll suggests. Twenty-percent of all convention watchers said that Eastwood was the highlight of the week, according to a PEW survey. His approval rating was even higher among independents, 26 percent of whom said that he was the best speaker of the RNC.
“I think it’s time for maybe a businessman — a stellar businessman,” Eastwood said during the comic routine. “When someone doesn’t do the job, you got to let them go.”
Eastwood, speaking to The Pine Cone on Tuesday as the Democratic National Convention was under way, said that he believes “A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.”
