Actor Burt Reynolds says his old friend Donald Trump is like an old west sheriff when it comes to making decisions.
“I’m worried about Donald in terms of us getting into a war, because he’s all for certain things,” the “Smokey and the Bandit” star told The Daily Beast. “I like him very much personally. I know him, and I like him. He’s always been nice and sweet and kind to me. But he seems to be like a sheriff that’s quick on the draw.”
Reynolds said that at this point in the election cycle, he has not decided which candidate to endorse, nor has he settled on whether to vote as a Republican, Democrat or forgo the parties and go independent.
Though he thinks the billionaire mogul has the GOP presidential nomination locked up, Reynolds said he just wants a candidate who will do more for the country than President Obama did.
“I don’t think there’s any question that Donald is going to be nominated,” he said. “You know, our current president has kind of messed things up the last four years. But I don’t know who I would vote for.”
He and Trump have a complicated history, going back to the the 1980s when Reynolds co-owned the United States Football League’s Tampa Bay Bandits and Trump owned the New Jersey Generals. Reynolds publicly blamed Trump for his part in the USFL folding after only four years of existence.
“I still feel and will always feel that his ambitions — his personal ambitions — were what sunk the league,” Reynolds said in the 2009 ESPN documentary “Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?”
Reynolds also offered up two alternative, equally left-field presidential candidates to Trump: his “Deliverance” co-star Jon Voight, and Voight’s daughter, Angelina Jolie.
“If any actor was going to run for office, it should be Jon Voight,” he said. “I think he’s quite brilliant in terms of handling himself and he always knows what’s going on in politics.”
Reynolds said that every time he brings up the idea of Voight running for president, the actor “gets red in the face and says he couldn’t do it.”
Voight officially endorsed Trump earlier this month.
As for Jolie, who has served as a United Nations ambassador and is known for her international humanitarian work, Reynolds thinks she might have a future career in politics ahead of her as well.
“It’s Jon Voight’s daughter that should run,” he said, mentioning that he’s known Jolie since she was a kid. “I like her a lot. She’s not afraid to tackle anything, and she’s a very, very sweet girl.”
