Stop Trying to Get Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to Run for President!

We’re in the midst of a seemingly never-ending period of political turmoil, and people are hungry for solutions. There’s long been a hunt for a charismatic figure who can unite the left and right, a man (let’s be honest, it’d never be a woman) of such charm and appeal that he could cross the political aisle and fix the chronically broken system for the good of all god-fearing Americans. It’s an alluring prospect, of course, and seems like far less hassle than trying to detangle centuries’ of corruption and discriminatory laws. But who could get the job done? For a surprising number of people, the answer is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

For several years now, a near-mythic narrative has formed around the mega-star that has positioned him not only as someone who could run for President but someone who should. This was no mere meme. In 2021, the 51-year-old Fast and Furious star was the subject of a political poll, in which 46 percent of those queried said they would support his campaign for the White House (Johnson responded that the data was “humbling.”) A 2017 GQ profile of the actor, titled “Dwayne Johnson for President!”, saw him admit he’d seriously considered a run.

Apparently, D.C. took note of this too. In a recent interview with Trevor Noah on his new podcast, "What Now?", Johnson said that “at the end of the year in 2022, I got a visit from the parties asking me if I was going to run, and if I could run [...] It was one after the other, and they brought up that poll, and they also brought up their own deep-dive research that would prove that should I ever go down that road [I’d be a real contender]. It was all very surreal because that’s never been my goal. My goal has never been to be in politics. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot about politics that I hate.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.