For a guy who swears he’s not running for President, Dwayne Johnson is looking like a guy who might run for President. After once again discussing the possibility of running on a podcast, Johnson was just on Capitol Hill meeting with Senators. The media apparently grilled him on the question of running for office, but The Rock was not cooking with answers.
It seems that every few years the idea of Dwayne Johnson running for office pops back into popular consciousness. As far back as 2017 The Rock has admitted that he is considering running. Polls in the past have shown that a significant number of people would approve of a Rock for President run. However, on the debut episode of Trevor Noah’s new podcast, Johnson reiterated that he will not be running for office anytime soon, as he doesn’t want to be taken away from his young daughters.
According to MSNBC (via Deadline) the trip to Capitol Hill had to do with Johnson being part of a campaign to build military recruitment. He met with members of both political parties. Rocky was apparently peppered with questions about running for office, not at all surprising given the recent resurgence of the topic and the fact that he was in Washington just a couple of days after the last time he talked about it. He simply refused to answer the questions.
We don’t know if any of them were the people he apparently met with back in 2022. On Noah’s show, The Rock revealed he was visited by both political parties after he expressed a willingness to run. Johnson is reportedly a registered independent, and in the few times he has publicly stated political views, they have come down on both sides of the spectrum, so it’s unclear where he would run if were to do so.
Johnson has explained that running is "off the table" for him, at least for now, because he has two young daughters and he wants to be around for them. Taking Rock at his word that he will not be running for President soon, he does still seem very open to the idea of running in general.
The biggest question will likely be if the widespread support he currently has will still be there in a decade or so when his daughters are older and he might be more open to running. Whether or not Johnson is still one of the biggest movie stars in the world at that point, he will certainly still be a major public figure. Of course, even if he won, he’d still only be the second President of the United States to have previously appeared at Wrestlemania.
From Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jesse Ventura we have certainly seen that celebrity does not hurt one's political ambitions. Certainly, the fact that Johnson has never completely shut down the idea of running means that he has at least some ambition in that area. We'll have to just wait and see if it ever actually happens.
