Chris Evans stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night where the now-former Marvel star promoted his new political video app, A Starting Point, which he hopes will get Americans more involved in politics by bringing them bipartisan information from elected officials. While you’d think it’d be easy to get to politicians to say “yes” to Captain America, Evans revealed that he struggled for months to lock down participants, and there was one very notable holdout: President Donald Trump.
The A Starting Point discussion begins in the opening moments above. When asked by Kimmel if his team approached Trump, Evans replied, “We did. We had to. You’ve gotta do it.” Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending how you look at it — the president wouldn’t bite, but not for lack of trying. “We asked him, he said no. He said no twice, and so I did my part,” Evans said, which set Kimmel up to say what we’re all thinking.
“President Trump said no to Captain America, just want to point that out for the record,” Kimmel noted.
On top of having issues convincing elected officials that the app is real and not a Borat-esque joke, Evans ran into problems on social media when he posed for a picture with Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Given Evans’ outspoken criticism of the Trump administration, he received some backlash for being friendly with Cruz, who has been a vocal supporter of the president. However, Evans previously explained to Trevor Noah that the whole thing came down to a simple explanation: Captain America isn’t about to be a jerk to a kid.
“In that circumstance, it was a child,” Evans said, addressing Cruz’s daughter who requested the photo. “I’ll always take a picture with a kid.”