It seems that Anthony Mackie is backtracking when it comes to his “endorsement” of Donald Trump.
During an interview with BET about his upcoming movie, Our Brand Is Crisis, Mackie seemingly gave two thumbs-up for Trump when he was asked about Trump’s presidential candidacy. The Captain America actor said that he would be “100 percent” in favor of running his campaign.
“I mean, first, that’ll be the best party ever when he won, and second, Trump’s an easy sell. … When you look at Trump, he’s an easy sell because you can sell him as the guy who worked his way up from nothing. And I think if you’re a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ candidate, people would identify with that,” he said.
Mackie also admitted to drinking the Kool-Aid and being on the Trump bandwagon.
But after he felt the wrath of the media and social media Monday, it seems that Mackie has had a change of heart and is like, “My bad, y’all. I was only joking.”
https://twitter.com/AnthonyMackie/status/656205350866018304
But here’s the thing. There has to be a reason people didn’t feel that he was joking. Mackie doesn’t exactly have a history of being progressive when it comes to certain things.
Last year, Spike Lee made headlines with a rant about gentrification during a Q&A at Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Pratt Institute. Lee got into it with an audience member who suggested that gentrification was a good thing.
“Let me just kill you right now. Because there was some [bulls—t] article in the New York Times saying ‘the good of gentrification’ … I don’t believe that. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart,” Lee said in his rant.
Even though Mackie was never mentioned by Lee or on his radar, probably, Mackie pointed out that Lee had no business talking about gentrification.
“Spike Lee don’t live in Brooklyn,” Mackie said in an interview. “Why did he leave Brooklyn? I live in Brooklyn. My address is in Brooklyn. I have two restaurants in Brooklyn. I don’t have a problem with gentrification. The people [who] want to live in Brooklyn, move to Brooklyn.”
And then there was the time when Mackie suggested that black men with dreadlocks are part of the problem when it comes to violence. In another interview, he spoke about how his nephew wanted dreadlocks and that he advised him otherwise: “Like, my nephew wanted to grow dreadlocks. I’m like, ‘Fine, I’ll sit you down and I’ll watch The First 48 with you, and everybody you see on that show that’s doing something wrong, they’re black dudes with dreadlocks. So, do you want to be seen as part of the problem or do you want to be an individual?’
“Let’s just say you have locks and you walking down the street,” Mackie continued. “The police pull you over and say you fit the description of somebody. You start yelling and arguing with the cops. Next thing you know, you pressed up against the wall going to jail for something you’re not even involved in, just because you look like somebody and you don’t know how to handle yourself.”
But let’s not blame the cops for profiling—just blame the person with dreadlocks.
So it’s not out of the ordinary for Mackie to say stupid s—t. Now, whether or not he was joking about Trump remains to be unseen. Anyone can tweet that something was just a joke. Hopefully for Mackie’s sake, he’ll stick to acting and leave the jokes to the professionals. Or just say, “I was only joking” at the end of every interview.