the "Rock" for president?

 

This morning, Washington Post columnist Gabriel Hays endorsed Dwayne Johnson for president – and that is not as crazy as is seems.

You can read his entire article at the link below, but the short version is that “the Rock” would be an excellent candidate for president, even if he does not run in 2024 because he wants to spend more time with his kids.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-columnist-endorses-rock-president-pathway-trump-biden-doom-loop

If you think that a movie actor can’t be elected president, consider the fact that Ronald Reagan was elected by the largest electoral vote gap since George Washington, and carried every single state except one.

 If you think that a professional wrestler can’t be elected to office, I have another name for you

Jesse Ventura

Twenty-five years ago Friday, the former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura shocked America by winning the Minnesota governor’s race as a third-party candidate. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential race, Ventura was “ecstatic” as Donald Trump — another brash outsider celebrity candidate — mounted a run.

 

 

 And now? Ventura compares Trump to Charles Manson and looks back “shamefully” on how his upset victory in 1998 served as a catalyst for Trump’s win.

“Oh, he watched my playbook, don't kid yourself,” Ventura said in a telephone interview.

 Ventura toppled the political establishment as the Reform Party gubernatorial candidate by throwing out everything in the conventional politician’s playbook. As The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher wrote in a 1998 story on Ventura’s victory, “With support heavily concentrated among young men, Ventura roamed the state demonstrating his straight talk and regular-guy habits. He ate big burgers, talked of big tax breaks and quoted the big, deceased thinkers — Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and the Doors’ Jim Morrison.”

 A Minneapolis Star Tribune poll found that he had energized new voters — 10 percent said that they wouldn’t have voted if Ventura hadn’t been one of the candidates. Ventura, who won nearly 50 percent of voters under 30 in a three-candidate race, said his campaign aides had tried to talk him out of his plan to visit every college campus in the state.

 “My people said to me, ‘Oh, you're wasting your time. They don't vote,’” he recalled. “I went, ‘Baloney. They've never had a chance to vote for Jesse the Body. They'll vote.’ And I went to every college campus, and they were hanging from the rooftops.”

 Compared to his major-party rivals, Ventura ran his campaign on a shoestring budget. Republican candidate Norm Coleman outspent him 5-1, and Democrat Skip Humphrey outspent him 3-1, according to the New York Times, which called his victory “an earth-rattling political upset that shellshocked politicians and prognosticators everywhere.” The paper described him as “a colorful mixture of affable, often amusing, bravado and plain-spoken drive.”

 That could describe Trump in 2016, and the two men did have similar styles. Both delivered a “tell-it-like-it-is” message in booming voices and attracted previously disaffected voters. Both knocked off a pair of well-known establishment politicians. Humphrey was the son of the late vice president Hubert Humphrey; Coleman was the mayor of St. Paul (and a future U.S. senator). Trump defeated the early GOP front-runner, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the son and brother of presidents — before beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election. (A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

 Both Trump and Ventura got a boost from the name recognition that came with their celebrity. Many Americans knew Trump from his years hosting “The Apprentice” and his hotels, casinos and other real estate holdings. Ventura was a famous pro wrestler who had his own action figure doll, as well as a radio show. They even had pro wrestling in common: Trump sponsored two early WrestleManias and headlined another and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

 In fact, the two men appeared together at WrestleMania XX, held at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2004, about 14 months after Ventura’s single term as governor. (He didn’t seek reelection.) Ventura, dressed in black and sporting a thick beard, left the ring to do a quick interview with Trump, who was sitting in the front row. Ventura, who often speculated about running for president, put Trump on the spot. “If I were to get back into politics, could I expect your moral and financial support?” he asked.

 “One hundred percent,” Trump replied firmly.

 “You know what? I think that we may need a wrestler in the White House in 2008!” Ventura yelled, to enthusiastic cheers.

 Ventura, a self-described social liberal and fiscal conservative, governed as more of a centrist than Trump. But Ventura’s contempt for the media — as evidenced by issuing “Official Jackal” Capitol press badges to the Capitol press corps — was a precursor to Trump’s “fake news” taunts

Trump considered a 2000 presidential run with Ventura’s Reform Party. He eventually ran as a Republican, but only after engineering a “hostile takeover” of the GOP, as Ventura (and others) said.

 Back when Ventura first became governor, the two men were friends, Ventura said. “He came up and visited me,” Ventura recalled. “I don't know what was going on in his mind; at the time we were embracing him because we were a third party. We were looking for anything to give us a foothold. And we thought, ‘Wow, if we can get Trump to run, he's a name. He's got money.’”

 In Trump’s book “The America We Deserve,” published in 2000 as he mulled a presidential run, Trump sounded like he had been taking notes from Ventura’s victory two years earlier.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/11/03/jesse-ventura-donald-trump/

If Trump doesn’t go to prison before then, the likely presidential candidates in 2024 will be Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Political professionals have rated Trump as one of the worst presidents in our nation’s history – and he would be worse in a second term

https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/slideshows/the-10-worst-presidents?slide=10

Joe Biden is actually doing a better job than he is given credit for, which is why I will vote for him in 2024. Even though his poll numbers are not strong, that was also true for George W. Bush and Barack Obama near the end of their first terms – and they both got re-elected.

Dwayne Johnson is getting acquainted with Capitol Hill, and while he's not  running for president -- or any other office, yet -- he IS taking meetings with U.S. senators to talk football and the military.

The Rock was in D.C. Wednesday for a sit-down with several top lawmakers, reportedly chopping it up about boosting recruitment in the Armed Forces, and the XFL ... which he owns.

 https://www.tmz.com/2023/11/15/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-visits-capitol-hill-meeting-senators-xfl-football-military-recruitment-potential-presidential-bid/

Would I vote for Dwayne Johnson for president in 2028?

Absolutely!