Sylvester Stallone welcomed Donald Trump to the stage at the President-elect’s Mar-a-Lago event Thursday evening, praising him as the “second George Washington.”
The two shook hands before Trump’s headlining speech for the America First Policy Institute gala, which took place at the President-elect’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Several of the figures Trump has tapped to be cabinet members in his administration, such as Matt Gaetz, were also in attendance. During the event, it was announced that North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum had been selected to be submitted to serve as Interior Secretary.
“We are in the presence of a really mythical character. I love mythology,” Stallone said in his speech, after opening with a lengthy comparison drawing connections between Jesus Christ, his boxing character Rocky Balboa and Trump himself. “Nobody in the world could’ve pulled off what he pulled off. So I’m in awe.”
“I’ll just say this — and I mean it,” Stallone continued. “When George Washington defended his country, he had no idea that he was going to change the world. Because without him, you could imagine what the world would look like. Guess what? We got the second George Washington. Congratulations!”
In an interview in 2016, when Trump had become the favorite to land the Republican party’s presidential nomination, Stallone told Variety, “I love Donald Trump. He’s a great Dickensian character. You know what I mean?… But I don’t know how that translates to,” a laugh, and then, “running the world.”
Speaking at a Mipcom panel in October after publishing his book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass,” Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh recalled Trump expressing jealousy towards Stallone during their interviews. While Trump was hosting NBC’s “The Apprentice,” his producer Burnett was also working on “The Contender,” with Stallone as host. Setoodeh shared that Trump would claim that “Sylvester Stallone wasn’t as good at making TV” and that he “couldn’t remember his lines, couldn’t deliver the words to the prompter.”
“I just think we need to let this sink in: Donald Trump has been president for four years, he’s been leader of the free world for those four years,” Setoodeh said. “What he’s still fixated on was the fact that he was a better reality star than Sylvester Stallone.”
