During the 2016 election, Michael Moore urged the Hillary Clinton campaign to spend more time in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They didn’t listen to him. Now, he has a new piece of advice for Democrats ahead of 2020: Only a celebrity can beat Donald Trump.
“We need to run a beloved American in 2020,” Moore said on The View Thursday morning while promoting his new Broadway show. When moderator Whoopi Goldberg joked, “No, I won’t!” Moore replied, “You would win! You run and [have] Michelle Obama as your running mate.”
At first, Goldberg seemed to smile at the prospect, but then shook her head and said, “That’s sad.”
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Conservative co-host Jedediah Bila was quick to push back against Moore’s suggestion that Democrats should find a celebrity to challenge Trump in 2020. “If they do that, those celebrities, once they get in office, they have to govern, they have to lead,” she said. “Haven’t we now seen that experience, whether it’s serious business experience or serious governmental experience, that experience matters?”
Moore held firm in his assertion, saying, “The celebrities on our side, first of all, are smart. If we ran Al Franken, run Tom Hanks — who wouldn’t vote for Tom Hanks for president of the United States? C’mon! Or Oprah!”
“I’ll tell you who,” Bila shot back. “Many Americans feel that those celebrities are out of touch. A lot of people would tell you ‘they don’t understand my needs.'”
“Wrong,” Moore interrupted, sounding a bit like Trump during his debates with Clinton. “We’re on TV right now. Americans love celebrities.”
“It’s very clear that America loves celebrities,” Goldberg agreed. “That’s why they voted for him.”
While Oprah Winfrey has said she is “never” running for political office, she more recently started to “rethink” that decision after seeing through Trump that barriers like “I don’t have the experience” or “I don’t know enough” don’t carry as much weight as they used to.
As for Hanks, the idea of him running for office started as a joke with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on Saturday Night Live’s season finale this past May. But while Hanks didn’t seem to take the prospect too seriously, Johnson said in an interview with GQ, “I think that it’s a real possibility.”
And then there is Kanye West, who dramatically announced his 2020 run from the MTV Video Music Awards stage in August 2015. He does not seem to be on Michael Moore’s shortlist for likely Democratic nominees, especially after West’s post-election meeting with Trump.
