FACT-CHECK: Did Bill Murray Just Endorse President Trump?

Another viral video?  You betcha.  And who doesn’t like some old-school Bill Murray comedy?  Ghostbusters.  I’m talking Caddyshack.  Stripes!

But what’s really going on in this clip making the rounds featuring the comedic actor talking Trump & politics?  Has Bill Murray really endorsed President Trump?

🚨WOW! BILL MURRAY SAID A VOTE FOR TRUMP IS A VOTE AGAINST THE SWAMP!

"What this [Trump] vote means is that the country is dissatisfied with the way that Washington has worked," Murray said in 2016.

Who needs Taylor Swift when you have BILL MURRAY?

Share to make this go viral! pic.twitter.com/8MbgvOlsJ8

— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) October 3, 2024

Has Bill Murray really endorsed President Trump!?

Let’s break this down.

The clip making the rounds is actually from a video still available on Facebook, which is where the full-screen video above is from.

According to the website Coming Soon, a recent post on X.com has been viewed 1.5 million times — though I can tell you that as fast as it is shared, multiple accounts are taking it back down.

A viral video with actor Bill Murray sharing his thoughts about Donald Trump is attempting to win voters on social media. A post on X, formerly Twitter, that has been viewed over 1.5 million times features an 2016 interview with Murray and suggests that he supports Trump. However, the 74-year-old legendary actor and comedian has a more complicated political history that’s easy to get, let’s say, lost in translation.

In the viral video, Bill Murray explains why he thinks people were voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The video is clipped from a November 2016 interview by Tracks, a multi-language TV program, that’s available on Facebook.

With a little more research I was able to tease out that Murray had dropped in as a surprise on the Fox Business show, the Claman Countdown where he joked about moderating the next Presidential debate in 2020!

.@robertwolf32 joins @ClamanCountdown ahead of tomorrow's Vice Presidential Debate…and he brings along a special guest, Actor Bill Murray! @LizClaman pic.twitter.com/i7T96AQZNC

— Claman Countdown (@ClamanCountdown) October 6, 2020

.@robertwolf32 joins @ClamanCountdown ahead of tomorrow’s Vice Presidential Debate…and he brings along a special guest, Actor Bill Murray! @LizClaman pic.twitter.com/i7T96AQZNC

— Claman Countdown (@ClamanCountdown) October 6, 2020

Yes, he was wearing shorts.  And yes, Liz Claman called him out for it!  Here’s the longer clip that includes the quip about moderating a debate between Trump and Biden leading up to the 2020 election!

Fox Business even carried a story on Murray’s impromptu appearance on the Claman Countdown!

Actor and comedian Bill Murray got a laugh out of Fox Business host Liz Claman Tuesday with a joke about moderating the next presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden.

“A couple of cups of coffee, I think I could do it,” he said.

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But has Murray really endorsed President Trump?  Here’s what I found out.  The answer is complicated, but in a nutshell — No.

The video making the rounds was part of a longer interview during a time when Murray had been interviewed by several media outlets, including the Guardian, and in the course of conversation the ongoing Presidential campaigns came up.  But this was even before the 2020 Claman Countdown appearance joking about moderating a debate — this was way back in 2016.

The video being touted at the moment was by no means an endorsement.  But considering that Murray has been known to campaign for the Green Party and really singled out Bernie Sanders as the only politician that wasn’t “complete pond scum” (see the clip below) — the fact that he recognized a possible Trump presidency even back in 2016 as a referendum on all-things DC is progress in my book.

But the fact is, the last word we have from Bill Murray to date (that I can find) is unfortunately negative towards President Trump.  In fact, he’s one of those that has thrown around the “H” word.

As the site I referenced earlier goes on to report (Coming Soon), while Murray did recognize that the 2016 Presidential election was a sign that people were dissatisfied with the way DC was operating, he didn’t then and hasn’t now endorsed President Trump.

At the time, Murray believed that the Trump vote was a surprise and suggests that the rise of an anti-establishment vote was about “the country being dissatisfied with the way that Washington has worked for the last couple of decades.”

He continued, “they’re lazy… and about inhibiting the other side, not about working together at all” the point that it’s a “national disgrace.”

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It’s unclear whether Bill Murray supports Donald Trump for president in the 2024 election.

Murray’s politics is not easy to pin down and seems to be political ambivalent or an independent. The actor has donated to various campaigns for Democratic candidates between 1986 and 1998. He also famously lampooned Trump’s White House Chief strategist Steve Bannon on Saturday Night Live. In 2016, the actor gave President Obama pro golf tips as part of a promo for Obamacare.

On the other hand, he has also praised the GOP tax cuts in 2018 as a “high tide raising all boats.” In the same year, he criticized divisive politics in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and believed that the strategy of Democrats speaking to specific parts of the population instead of speaking to everyone was “poor.”

While I love seeing the near constant abandonment of the democratic party by “former democrats” pledging their votes to President Trump, I am fairly certain that for at least the moment… Bill Murray is not among them.

Or at the least, he hasn’t come clean yet.  But I’ll say this — there have been far bigger defections from the left than Bill Murray over the last few weeks in favor of the Trump camp.

Will I hold my breath?  No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Murray decided to jump out of the consistently failing narrative of the democratic party, break the Groundhog Day cycle of misplaced hope, and gave President Trump a ringing endorsement.