Posted by Adam

Saturday September 8, 2012

CLINT Eastwood has defended himself against the critics who mocked him for interviewing an empty chair at the RNC

The star, 82, maintained his silence for nearly a week after his improvised 12-minute appearance in Tampa which he addressed an empty chair was lampooned and derided.

“I had three points I wanted to make — that not everybody in Hollywood is on the Left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job,” he said.

“But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

“They vet most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say’.

“It was supposed to be a contrast with all the scripted speeches, because I’m Joe Citizen. I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.

“I got to the convention site just 15 or 20 minutes before I was scheduled to go on. That was fine, because everything was very well organized.”

He was taken to a Green Room, where Archbishop Dolan of New York dropped by to introduce himself. It was then that the empty chair notion seized him.

“There was a stool there, and some fellow kept asking me if I wanted to sit down,” Clint recalled. “When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.

He asked a helper to take the chair out to the lectern while he was being announced.

“The guy said, ‘You mean you want it at the podium?’ “and I said, ‘No, just put it right there next to it’,” he said.

Eastwood knew the crowd was behind him.

“The audience was super enthusiastic, and it’s always great when they’re with you instead of against you,” he said.

“They really seemed to be enjoying themselves.”

“I read the Tampa newspaper, and every article said something negative about the convention, but there wasn’t much about me,” he said.

Eastwood said the commentators and reporters who have lambasted his performance ‘are obviously on the Left’ and that most Americans were preoccupied with the economy, not a movie star’s appearance at a political gathering.

“A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.”

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