The last two Republican presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, are skipping the coronation of Donald Trump this week. So are the last two GOP presidential nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney. And, oh yeah, John Kasich, the governor of must-win Ohio, won’t be there either.
So the Trump campaign is hoping their top celebrity speaker, Antonio Sabato, Jr. can fill the void.
That’s a lot of pressure on a celebrity most Americans have never heard of.
Sabato’s claim to fame is modeling Calvin Klein underwear during the Clinton administration twenty years ago. More recently, he hosted the Chippendales Las Vegas male revue.
I am not making any of this up.
Unless Sabato Jr. plans to deliver his speech in his underwear — and at this convention anything is possible — it still can’t compete with Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood’s endorsement of Romney four years ago.
Eastwood has starred in some unforgettable movies, and even has his own unforgettable punchline, “Go ahead, make my day!”
I was in Tampa in 2012 watching Eastwood speak to an empty chair, mumbling to an invisible President Obama. I thought to myself at the time, “this is the weirdest moment you will ever see at a political convention.”
Watching actor Clint Eastwood talk to an empty chair at the 2012 GOP Convention.
I wrote about it in my book Front Row Seat at the Circus:
The headlines belonged to Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, who addressed the delegates shortly before Romney’s speech. He had refused to use the teleprompter, and the Romney camp had agreed to let him because, well, he was Clint Eastwood.
When he appeared at the lectern, to a cheering crowd, there was an empty chair by his side, a proxy for President Obama.
“So I, so I’ve got Mr. Obama sitting here, and he’s, I was going to ask him a couple of questions.” Eastwood said to the delegates and the millions watching on television around the country. “Do you just…you know…I know…people were wondering…you don’t handle that? Okay,” he mumbled looking at the empty chair. A moment later his imaginary conversation turned surreal, “What do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that. I can’t tell him to do that to himself. You’re crazy, you’re absolutely crazy!”
Immediately social media went into overdrive. “I’d feel better if I knew for sure that Clint doesn’t see anyone in the chair,” tweeted Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Actress Mia Farrow wrote she thought Senator Marco Rubio, who introduced Romney following Eastwood’s speech, was “rude to ignore invisible Obama sitting right there.”
The Twitter handle @InvisibleObama had over twenty thousand followers within the hour. Tweeps (yes, that’s a word) across the world started posting photos of themselves pointing at empty chairs with the hashtag “Eastwooding.” One widely circulated post was of a Star Wars juxtaposition of a Princess Leia hologram standing on the chair.
Despite the hilarity, this was not how the Romney camp had envisioned the final night of their convention. “It was campaign malpractice that the Romney managers sent out a dithering, clueless Clint Eastwood,” Sabato wrote on his popular “Crystal Ball” blog.
I was watching with our crew from our vantage point above, and thought to myself the crowd reaction has gone from excited and happy to confused and nervous. The red light above the teleprompter began to blink frantically. Eastwood was running long and endangering pushing Romney’s speech out of prime time on the East Coast.
“I’ve been watching these political conventions it seems like all of my life, and I’ve never seen a moment quite like that,” I said on air that night. Eastwood later said, “the chair idea, that just came out of the air.” No kidding.
There are plenty of other behind-the-scenes insights from the political conventions in Front Row Seat at the Circus.
As for Sabato Jr., he regularly calls President Obama “the worst president of my lifetime” in his tweets. His rage against Hillary Clinton seems to be as deep. So perhaps having an imaginary conversation with her, on stage in his underwear, could keep the proud tradition of Clint alive.
The Donald would probably love it.
I loved watching Clint Eastwood last night–he was terrific!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2012