History-making transgender DNC speaker denounces Eastwood’s defense of Trump

LGBT rights activist Sarah McBride was not convinced by film legend Clint Eastwood’s condemnation of the United States’ current “pussy generation” or his defense of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In a recent Esquire interview, Eastwood, 86, a longtime conservative, said he would choose Trump over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even though the GOP candidate has said “a lot of dumb things.”

The acclaimed actor and director said Trump is “onto something” because people are getting fed up with the political correctness of the “kiss-ass generation.”

“We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist,” Eastwood said in the interview, published on Wednesday.

McBride, 25, of Wilmington, Del., who recently made history as the first openly transgender convention speaker at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, is the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization.

She argued that it was misguided for Eastwood to appeal to his childhood during the 1930s and ’40s to figure out what is racist.

“What was considered racist in 1930 is not an accurate barometer of what actually is racist. And if he’s approaching these issues with a 1930s or 1940s lens, then I can see why he doesn’t fully understand it. It’s pretty outdated,” McBride said in a Friday phone interview with Yahoo News.

She also pointed out on Twitter that a lot of racist things were not considered offensive back when Eastwood was growing up. She asked her followers to help her compile a list of these things. The list included Jim Crow laws, a segregated military, dismissing the concept of a black president, poll taxes, opposition to federal anti-lynching laws and much more.

What Trump is “onto,” according to Eastwood, is saying what’s on his mind, even though it’s “not so good” sometimes. He cited Trump’s comments about U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is the son of Mexican immigrants, as a “dumb thing to say,” but thinks the press is blowing it out of proportion. Trump had argued that the U.S.-born Curiel should not hear a Trump University fraud case because of the jurist’s Mexican heritage.

“He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody — the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just f***ing get over it. It’s a sad time in history,” he told Esquire.

But for McBride, Trump’s comments about historically marginalized groups are not something to “just f***ing get over”; they are major problems with his candidacy. She is troubled by his proposed ban on Muslim Americans entering the country, his response to the Black Lives Matter movement and his stance on LGBT issues, which she says cannot be described as anything but “hateful and discriminatory.”

Eastwood’s status as one of Hollywood’s rare staunch conservatives is well known. Just four years ago, he gave a Republican National Convention speech in which he infamously addressed an empty chair that was supposed to represent President Obama.

McBride said she was aware of Eastwood’s conservatism, but still had hopes that he would disassociate himself from Trump.

“I certainly enjoyed some of his movies in the past,” she said. “I grew up watching ‘In the Line of Fire,’ but I was disappointed, although not surprised, given some of the politics that he’s expressed in the past. Really, I think it shows a lack of understanding of what’s at stake and what Donald Trump is calling for.

“I think it’s so sad when someone who has lived a really great life like Clint Eastwood, a life of success and fame and wealth, for him to diminish or demean any vulnerable group’s effort for basic dignity,” McBride said. “And I don’t think Clint Eastwood is in any place to define what ‘ouch’ means for someone else.”

New national polls released Thursday showed that Clinton has a commanding lead over Trump. The new information was released at the end of one of the Trump campaign’s worst weeks, which included his public feud with the parents of a Muslim American soldier who heroically died in Iraq.

But McBride argued it’s important for social progressives not to rest on their laurels because the election is far from over and many down-ballot races are particularly important for the LGBT community. Much of the legislation she deems hateful took place on the local and state levels. Nevertheless, she said the change in polling overall reflected that Trump’s message is not resonating with the American public the way Clinton’s is.

“People in this country are good and decent, and do not want to target their fellow Americans and their neighbors for discrimination or mean-spirited and hurtful attacks,” she said.

Related video: