Chris Evans Responds Amid Bill Maher Pleading With ‘Captain America’ Star to Run for Office

During Friday night’s episode of the HBO series, Real Time With Bill Maher, the late-night talk show host welcomed Captain America star, Chris Evans, to talk about his new civic engagement platform, A Starting Point — designed to help voters learn about significant issues occurring today. Described as a video-based network co-created with Mark Kassen and technology entrepreneur Joe Kiani, ASP aims to be a smart, “bipartisan channel of communication and connectivity between Americans and their elected officials” for a “more informed electorate.”

During the interview with Evans, Maher noted most controversially how America had become a “dumbed-down society” in recent years, ultimately leading American voters to drift toward more showbusiness-like figures, like former reality TV star and current president, Donald Trump. Maher doubled-down on his argument, mentioning how people like George Clooney or Ben Affleck would make for ideal, potential candidates in the future with the host inevitably asking Evans, “Is that for you?”

While taking a moment to think, Evans most humbly replied he didn’t “know enough” to run for office. “That’s another thing that we’re all scared to say — I don’t know. I don’t know,” the Boston native said. “And I don’t know enough, and I wouldn’t disservice or disrespect the position by thinking that I could handle it. I’ve thought about helping out in that capacity, but it would require a lot of homework.”

Though Maher admitted he was “not pushing” him to run or not to run for office, he admitted how he wanted to “disabuse” him of one thing. “I’ve spent a very long time in television talking to a lot of politicians… and you know a lot more than a lot of them do. They are f—ing idiots, a lot of them… There are no qualifications, and that is proven every day by the guy who is at the top of the world. He knows absolutely nothing. Don’t do it because you don’t want to do it, not because you think you know less than they do. Because they don’t have to know anything, and many of them don’t.”

Evans and his co-founders took ASP live this past summer, with the actor sharing his goal and intentions of the civic engagement platform through a video posted to his official social media accounts, introducing the new venture with fans.

Intending to create “a little more connectivity between elected officials and their constituents” and “demystify some issues that [he] thinks some people may find daunting,” Evans hopes voters will effectively understand political issues that matter to them most while ensuring their voices are heard in the upcoming 2020 election.