Actor McConaughey’s Venture Into D.C. Gun Debate Renews Questions About His Political Ambitions

Actor Matthew McConaughey went to Washington this week, and much like director Frank Capra’s fictional Mr. Smith, he learned the hard way that Washington can be … complicated.After an emotional plea for responsible gun laws at a White House briefing Tuesday, he spent a second day on Capitol Hill Wednesday meeting with members of Congress.The command performance by the Texan had people chattering about his political prospects yet again. A former presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, said on Twitter that the Oscar winning-actor has “presidential qualities.”Mr. McConaughey, a native of Uvalde, Texas, waded into the debate over gun rights in response to the shooting at an elementary school in his hometown, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. The assailant entered the school with an AR-15 rifle he had bought days after his 18th birthday and held out in a classroom for more than an hour before being killed by a U.S. Border Patrol team.“Responsible gun owners are fed up,” Mr. McConaughey said in an emotional, 22-minute speech at the White House Tuesday. In graphic detail, he described how the bodies of the shooters’ victims were so mutilated that they had to be identified via DNA sampling.One student victim, he said, was identified only by her Green converse sneakers. His wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, a Brazilian model and designer, sat meekly to the side of the briefing room clutching a pair of the same green sneakers while her husband spoke.Lobbying members of Congress again on Wednesday, he called on lawmakers to “reach for higher ground” and pass a bill to raise the minimum age to buy an assault rifle to 21 as well as laws requiring additional background checks for gun purchases.After a sitdown with the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, she praised the actor for his dedication and said the two “agreed on the need for urgent action to save lives — especially for our children.” Mr. McConuaghey was also pictured Wednesday with Senator Leahy of Vermont as well as two members of Texas’s congressional delegation — Marc Veasey and Jake Ellzey — and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler of New York. Ms. McConaughey attended some of the meetings with her husband, and was wearing the same green Converse tennis shoes she clung to during Tuesday’s speech.While Mr. McConaughey made the rounds, the House Oversight Committee was hearing from victims of the shooting and surviving family members. Among the witnesses was Miah Cerillo, an 11-year-old student at Robb Elementary who told horrified attendees via a recorded message that she smeared her dead friend’s blood on herself and played dead to avoid being shot. Some political pundits on the right pilloried the actor for his activism, as well as the White House for ceding center stage in the debate. “There’s something wrong with a White House that puts Biden on ‘Kimmel’ and McConaughey in the press room,” the Daily Wire founder, Ben Shapiro, said.Others praised his efforts.“So, Matthew McConaughey is running for president one day,” a lawyer and creator of the SHERO newsletter, Amee Vanderpool, said following Mr. McConaughey’s White House speech. A resident of Austin, Texas, Mr. McConaughey considered running for governor in autumn 2021 but ultimately ruled it out. He has said in the past that he would be “honored” to be considered for political office, but when asked again more recently if he was running for office, he said only that “I am not — until I am.”Recent polls in the state have suggested that in a head-to-head match with Texas’s current Republican governor, Greg Abbott, Mr. McConaughey would prevail 44 percent to 35 percent.

Actor McConaughey’s Venture Into D.C. Gun Debate Renews Questions About His Political Ambitions

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