Clint Eastwood isn’t losing any sleep over potential backlash following comments published yesterday in which the actor-director chastised today’s “pussy generation.”
Approached by TMZ on Wednesday night — after the publication of an Esquire interview in which he said people need to “just f—ing get over” Donald Trump’s take on racial issues — Eastwood was asked whether he was worried that young people would stop going to his movies because of his comments.
Eastwood’s response: “What do I care?”
Eastwood went on to clarify that he wasn’t targeting the younger generation when he said, “We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells.”
“It’s not the younger generation, you see. It’s the older generation now,” Eastwood said. “The younger generation’s fine.”
Asked about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s attack on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim-American parents of an Army captain who was killed in Iraq, Eastwood offered, “I think he made a mistake by making fun of the guy’s dead son but, you know, that’s his business.”
The “Gran Torino” star also reserved some criticism for the Democratic party on that front, opining that the Khan family — who spoke at the Democratic National Convention — was “exploited” by the left.
“But also, you know, the other guy was being exploited by a political party,” Eastwood said. “That’s no good either. Whether either party does it, exploitation … you shouldn’t take advantage of some poor slob.”
Discussing Trump in the Esquire interview, Eastwood opined that people need to stop being so quick to label things as “racist.”
“[Trump’s] onto something, because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,” he said. “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.”
Watch Eastwood brush off the blowback in the video below.