Dennis Quaid Stumps for Donald Trump, his “Favorite President of the 21st Century”

It’s no surprise that actor Dennis Quaid has come out in support of Donald Trump’s ongoing attempt to return to the White House. What is surprising is that the Texan, who came this close to portraying former president George W. Bush in a high-profile TV series, has turned his back on the 43rd president, saying he prefers Trump to the two-term president from 2001-2009.

The announcement came Saturday, after Quaid took the stage at Trump’s rally in California’s Coachella Valley. At the rally, Quaid—who hesitantly told Piers Morgan in May, “I, myself, I think I’m going to vote for [Trump] in the next election,” and that “I was ready not to vote for Trump…but I saw a weaponization of our justice system.”

“Trump is probably the most investigated person in the history of the world,” the actor continued. “And they haven’t really been able to get him on anything.”

Quaid was proven wrong a few days later, when a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records; even before that, the former president had lost a number of civil cases, including one in which a jury found him guilty of sexual abuse and defamation of his accuser, E. Jean Carroll.

When asked by Morgan, “Do you have to like Trump to vote for him,” Quaid was more emphatic. “No,” he swiftly responded. “In the last campaign, in ’16 and ’20, I found myself saying ‘oh please don’t do that. Please don’t say that.’ These things will come out of his mouth.”

“People might call him an asshole,” Quaid said. “But he’s my asshole.”

In recent months, however, it appears Trump has been promoted from Dennis Quaid’s asshole to Dennis Quaid’s favorite president…since the year 2000, that is. After taking the stage at the campaign event for the former president Saturday, Quaid said that Trump is “My favorite president of the 21st century,” a field that includes Bill Clinton, who left office in 2001 and who Quaid depicted in 2010 movie The Special Relationship, about Tony Blair’s ties to Clinton and George W. Bush. (The New York Times referred to Quaid’s turn as “dazzling,” by the way.)

It also includes Bush, who Quaid was cast as for Ryan Murphy’s abortive Katrina: American Crime Story (a Quaid-free portion of which was eventually repurposed into Apple TV series Five Days at Memorial) And them there’s Barack Obama, who Quaid supported in 2008, then calling Obama “the Superman for everyone.”

But Superman apparently ranks lower than asshole, at least in Quaid’s mind. At Saturday’s event, Quaid announced, “You know, I’m an actor and I just had this movie come out that’s, it was a famous last name: Reagan. My favorite president of the 20th century.”

“We were a nation in decline. That’s what they told us. Ronald Reagan came along and said, no, we’re not a nation in decline. We’re going there. And we followed him. The same with Trump. With President Trump. My favorite president of the 21st century.”

An odd statement, to say the least, as it’s Trump who has repeatedly announced an American decline, even saying at an August rally that “I use the term, often time in closing, ‘We are a nation in decline. We are a failed nation.’ And I think it’s a beautiful phrase.” Meanwhile, Democratic candidate and current vice-president Kamala Harris disputes that characterization, saying instead that the country is about to “write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

When paired with the rest of Quaid’s speech, one has to wonder if he understood who he was campaigning for. “I’m here today to tell you that it’s time to pick a side,” the actor began. “Are we going to be a nation that stands for the Constitution or for TikTok?” he asked, an apparent reference to the social media platform that politicians on both sides of the aisle have made an effort to ban.

That ban, which President Joe Biden signed into law, makes Quaid’s two sides assessment a little harder to understand, especially given Trump’s statements in 2020 calling for a “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Meanwhile, in July, Trump proudly announced, “I’m for TikTok” as the ban moved forward.

So when Quaid says, “It’s time to pick a side,” did he really, truly mean the side of the man who thinks a country moving backward is “beautiful,” and that TikTok deserves more public support than the Constitution? Or perhaps—like his favorite president of the last century—he’s just confused.