Sylvester Stallone didn’t hold back his praise for Donald Trump on Thursday as he referred to the president-elect as the “second George Washington.”
“We are in the presence of a really mythical character,” said the “Rocky” actor, who introduced Trump during the America First Policy Institute’s gala held at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
“I love mythology and this individual does not exist on this planet. Nobody in the world could pulled off what he pulled off so I’m in awe.”
He later claimed that Washington had “no idea he was going to change the world” when he “defended” the United States.
“Because without him, you can imagine what the world would look like. Guess what? We’ve got the second George Washington,” said the actor, who later embraced Trump on stage.
Earlier in his speech, Stallone described the opening scene of “Rocky” that shows a painting of Jesus Christ hanging on the wall as his character Rocky Balboa fights in the boxing ring below.
“So the image pans down from Jesus onto Rocky being hit and at that moment, he was the chosen person and that’s how I began the journey,” Stallone said.
“Something was going to happen, this man was going to go through a metamorphosis and change lives, just like President Trump.”
Stallone’s comments come after years of declining to publicly endorse Trump and turning down a role in the federal government despite showing “love” for the president-elect.
The actor, in a 2016 interview with Variety, described Trump as a “great Dickensian character” and someone “bigger than life” like Babe Ruth.
“But I don’t know how that translates,” he said with a laugh, “to running the world.”
Stallone hasn’t fully kept his distance from the president-elect, however, as he notably helped get late legendary boxer Jack Johnson a posthumous pardon from Trump back in 2018.
The actor has also partied at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve and gifted Trump with a signed poster after his 2016 election win.
Trump, who has described Stallone as a “friend” and “wonderful guy” on social media, has reportedly showed signs that he’s jealous of the actor in private.
Democracy In The Balance
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Trump has obsessed over Stallone’s former reality show “The Contender” and told people that he “wasn’t as good at making TV,” according to Variety’s co-editor-in-chief and author of “Apprentice in Wonderland” Ramin Setoodeh.
“I just think we need to let this sink in: Donald Trump has been president for four years, he’s been leader of the free world for those four years, and what he’s still fixated on was the fact that he was a better reality star than Sylvester Stallone,” Setoodeh said.
