He ‘shakes things up’
Redford wasn’t always so down on Trump. In 2015, after Trump threw his hat into the ring to be the Republican candidate for the presidency, Redford told Larry King: “Look he’s got such a big foot in his mouth, I’m not sure you’re going to get it out. But on the other hand, I’m glad he’s in there.
“I’m glad he’s in there because him being the way he is, and saying what he says the way he says it, I think shakes things up and I think that’s very needed. Because on the other side, it’s so bland, it’s so boring, it’s so empty.”
Feeling ‘out of place‘
By 2018, a year into the first Trump presidency, Redford said he felt “out of place” in his country, without mentioning the president by name.
“For the first time I can remember, I feel out of place in the country I was born into and the citizenship I’ve loved my whole life,” he wrote in a (since deleted) article for the Sundance Institute. “For weeks I’ve watched with sadness as our civil servants have failed us, turning toward bigotry, mean-spiritedness, and mockery as the now-normal tools of the trade.
“How can we expect the next generation to step up and serve, to be interested in public life, and to aspire to get involved when all we show them is how to spar, attack, and destroy each other?” he wrote.
Backing Biden and memories of FDR
In a 2020 piece for CNN, Redford urged people to vote for Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, in the upcoming election.