Tim Allen has been on a big right-wing kick lately (or, you know, forever), with him noting in March of last year that the real Nazis are the liberals in Hollywood who think it’s bad for some reason when people are Republicans. Later, when his Last Man Standing sitcom was canceled, he argued that the show’s pro-man agenda was too “dangerous” for ABC and that its message about a man who isn’t afraid to roll his eyes at some anti-gun hippies was far too important to give up on. The clear implication was that he was a Trump supporter, but when Fox announced that it was reviving Last Man Standing, the network made it clear that it had no intention of courting controversy by directly addressing whether or not Allen’s character was a Trumper.
Apparently, the real Tim Allen is also taking a similar stance, claiming in a new Entertainment Weekly interview that he’s really more of an “anarchist” than a Democrat or Republican. Allen says he only supports a government that “actually does what we pay them to do,” and if he hates paying taxes or other seemingly Republican-leaning things, it’s only because he doesn’t trust the government to use those taxes properly. He also supports asking people to actively try and improve the things they want to improve, rather than “putting on a hoodie and screaming in the streets” to try and convince our elected officials to do the things we pay them to do.
EW specifically asked if he’s a Trump supporter, and Allen offered the stock, non-committal response that all Trump supporters love to make when they don’t want anyone to get mad at them. Basically, his stance is that Trump deserves a chance, because what he’s accomplished so far is “like a slight of hand.” Allen says that Trump doesn’t work “very attractively,” but he “just fixed a pothole” and “the economy is doing better.” He says he likes to sit back and watch “the theater of it,” so it doesn’t really matter whether or not he likes Trump.
Of course, he’s coming at this from a place of enormous privilege. Tim Allen is a white guy with a lot of money, so he’s free to sit back and watch “the theater of it” because nobody’s locking his kid in a cage and trying to deport him. Nobody’s trying to make his healthcare so expensive that he has no choice but to wait until he dies in excruciating pain. Nobody’s arresting him without a trial. Nobody’s throwing paper towels at him as he tries to put his life back together in the wake of a hurricane. Tim Allen may think he’s an anarchist and that Trump deserves a chance, but that’s only because he really just cares about himself. Allen can dress it up however he wants, but that makes him no different than any other Trump supporter.