Chris Evans Says Donald Trump Refused to Speak to Him About A Starting Point
Chris Evans launched A Starting Point, a civic engagement website that encourages bipartisanship, with Mark Kassen and Joe Kiani in July 2020. Evans first began pursuing the idea of A Starting Point in 2017, and since then he has spoken with elected officials so they can present their viewpoints to voters in a streamlined manner. While appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Evans revealed that while he tried to meet with President Donald Trump, he was not able to get the president to participate in the project.
Chris Evans on A Starting Point
At the start of the interview, Kimmel asked Evans to explain the function of A Starting Point.
“It’s designed to well, ultimately create engagement, you know, I think a lot of people turn away from politics because the landscape itself is a little daunting,” Evans said. “So this is a way to get fair and balanced bipartisan information from across the aisle.”
After coming up with the idea in 2017, Evans spent the next few years gathering interviews with elected officials. Evans admitted that launching A Starting Point was not as easy as he thought it would be.
“Initially everybody thought it was a joke. I don’t know what I thought. I think foolishly I just thought this is such a great idea, who wouldn’t want to be a part of this, you know,” Evans said.
He continued, “I thought the problem was going to be turning people away. Nobody responded, everybody thought it was a joke, everybody thought we were somehow trying to prank them.”
President Donald Trump turned Chris Evans down
To try and start the project, Evans tried emailing and sending video messages to politicians asking them to participate.
“We started with emails that were completely ineffective. Then we jumped to videos thinking maybe if I, you know, showed my face that might help,” he said. “And then even that did nothing.”
On his first trip to Washington D.C., only five or six politicians took meetings with him. In the end, Evans was able to get over 200 elected political figures on board. However, President Trump turned the former Marvel actor down.
“We did, we asked him. He said no. He said no twice, so I did my part,” Evans told Kimmel.
“President Trump said no to Captain America. Just want to point that out for the record,” Kimmel joked.
Why the actor thinks A Starting Point is important
During the interview, Kimmel asked Evans how the website works if politicians are dishonest. Evans said that A Starting Point has fact-checkers, and if the video a politician films is not factually correct it is not put on the website.
Going forward, Evans hopes people will trust the work put into A Starting Point.
“You know we live in this time where if you disagree with someone you think, ‘Don’t speak to them’ and the only problem is these are elected officials. They’re already in office, they already got power,” he said. “They’re writing bills that affect your life. To pretend they don’t exist I think is more pernicious than sitting down with them, hearing what they have to say and letting it be you know a landscape of competing ideas.”
