Dave Bautista punches back on view of Trump as ‘tough guy’
(The Hill) — Former professional wrestler Dave Bautista took out his frustration with former President Trump’s “tough guy” image during a bit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Wednesday.
“Fellas, we gotta talk,” Bautista says in the video, while sparring in a gym’s boxing ring. “A lot of men seem to think that Donald Trump is some kind of tough guy. He’s not.”
The “Guardians of the Galaxy” star continues the bit with tire flipping and battle rope training exercises, mocking Trump’s perceived strength and agility while clips of Trump are interspersed, including two-handed sips of water and reports of Trump cheating at golf.
“I mean, look at him, he wears more makeup than Dolly Parton,” Bautista says during the roast. “He whines like a baby. The guy is afraid of birds. Donald Trump had his daddy pay a doctor to say his widdle feet hurt so he could dodge the draft.”
“Look at that gut. It’s like a garbage bag full of buttermilk,” he adds as an unflattering photo of Trump golfing is shown on screen.
Bautista threw in a crude joke about Trump’s dancing, before concluding: “This November, let’s stop kidding ourselves.”
Bautista, whose other screen credits include the “Dune” movies and several Marvel features as Drax the Destroyer, has been a vocal supporter of Vice President Harris’s campaign, and he encouraged his fans in an Instagram post last month to vote.
“Do your part, get out there, and vote,” he said in the post, wearing a Harris-Walz campaign shirt. “Your voice matters, and this election’s too important to sit out.”
Host Jimmy Kimmel set up the latest skit during his 15-minute monologue, noting that Trump leads Harris in polls of male voters.
“Young, straight, white men love Donald Trump … But is he the strong, Alpha man these men believe him to be?” the late-night host asked. “Not according to one of the toughest guys I know, he isn’t.”
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Democrats have been concerned about Harris’s ability to attract male voters to become the nation’s first female president, as the overall race remains tight.
A recent New York Times/Siena College survey found that Trump leads Harris 53 percent to 42 percent among likely male voters nationally.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016, in male voter support by 11 points, according to the Pew Research Center.
Kimmel writer and comedian Jesse Joyce said on social platform X that he wrote the skit “cause it’s what I always wanted to say about Trump pretending to be a tough guy.”
A Pew Research survey last month on Americans’ views of masculinity found that 45 percent of Republican men surveyed think people have negative views of masculine men, and most of those said it’s a bad thing. More than half of the Republican men surveyed rated themselves as highly masculine.
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