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Clint Eastwood turned in a bizarre, unscripted endorsement of Republican Mitt Romney on Thursday night.
Standing on the convention stage with an empty chair, Eastwood carried on a sometimes rambling conversation with an imaginary President Barack Obama. The Oscar-winning director of “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby” criticized Obama for failing to turn the economy around and for wanting to close the Guantánamo Bay prison for terror suspects.
“How do you handle the promises you’ve made? What do you say?” Eastwood asked the imaginary Obama. “I know even some of the people in your party were disappointed you didn’t close Gitmo,” the Guantanamo prison.
At another point, the 82-year-old Eastwood acted as if he were listening to the imaginary Obama unleash a diatribe against Romney, poking Vice President Joe Biden and letting the convention audience guess what the president said.
“He can’t do that to himself. You’re absolutely crazy!” Eastwood responded. “You’re getting as bad as Biden. Biden is the intellect in the Democratic Party. It’s just kind of a grin with a body behind it.”
At one point, Eastwood talked about the need for change.
“When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ‘em go,” Eastwood said. The tough-guy actor of “Dirty Harry” fame drew a finger across his throat.
Twitter was instantly ablaze with comments mocking Eastwood’s speech. Howard Kurtz, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” tweeted that “Clint’s empty chair act” was the “weirdest convention moment I have ever seen.” Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” declared “a great night for Mitt Romney just got sidetracked by Clint Eastwood. Wow. That was bad.”
