Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. says supporting President Donald Trump in the 2016 election ended his acting career.
“I had to sell everything,” Sabato told Variety. “I had to pay all my debts. I was blacklisted. All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids.
“It’s been terrible. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a disgrace. It’s tough, because if you’re in that environment in Hollywood and you have something to say that they don’t like, they’re going to let you know.”
Sabato, a former Calvin Klein model who had roles on the television show “Melrose Place” and on the soap operas “General Hospital” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” claimed he was forced to move from California to Florida, where he now works in construction.
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“I go on the job at two in the morning, and I’m making sure that the job is controlled and supervised by me,” he told Variety. “I’m in the car all day, driving, going through all the sites. Five days a week, nonstop.”
Sabato told People in July 2016 that he had never been a Republican or Democrat and that he was pleased to have been asked by the Trump campaign to speak at the Republican National Convention.
“It is refreshing to have a candidate like Trump who is so honest about his feelings because he speaks for many of us when he says we are in a bad place,” Sabato said.
That same month, he spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention and claimed in an interview with ABC News that former President Barack Obama was a Muslim and “with the bad guys,” which caused a stir. Trump was a champion of the “birther movement,” a discredited and false conspiracy theory that Obama is not an American citizen and secretly a Muslim.
“We had a Muslim president for 7 1/2 years,” Sabato told ABC in the July 2016 interview.
Obama was born in the United States and is a Christian.
Sabato said he does not regret supporting Trump and that he believes there are many other Trump supporters in the entertainment industry who are afraid to speak out.
“I was the first celebrity to come out and talk about the president, and he had my vote from day one,” Sabato told Variety. “I was the first one to say he was going to win. My integrity is intact. What I believe in is still intact.”
