After the cancelation of Tim Allen’s ABC series Last Man Standing, some on the right are accusing the network of axing the show for political reasons.
After all, Tim Allen is a Republican in real life, and on the show, he played an outspoken conservative character. The show frequently cracked jokes about those on the left that are typically not seen on mainstream sitcoms, including lines about Barack Obama being a dictator and Hillary Clinton being a liar.
Allen himself chimed in on Twitter recently, though he didn’t exactly weigh in on whether he thinks his show’s cancelation had something to do with politics. Allen said that he is “Stunned and blindsided by the network I called home for the last six years. #lastmanstanding.”
Last Man Standing had a pretty healthy life on ABC, lasting six full seasons, and the network says their decision to cancel it had nothing to do with the show’s political bent. The network’s president recently said that they decided to stop airing comedies on Friday nights, which is the same reason they canceled the non-political Dr. Ken.
“I canceled Last Man Standing for the same business and scheduling reasons that I canceled Dr. Ken, The Real O’Neals, The Catch and American Crime,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said on Tuesday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Last Man Standing was a challenging one for me because it was a steady performer in the ratings, but once we made the decision not to continue with comedies on Fridays, that was where we landed.”
So what are Tim Allen’s actual political views? Is he a supporter of Donald Trump? Here’s what you need to know.
1. He Has Described Himself as a Center-Right Fiscal Conservative
Tim Allen is an outspoken Republican, describing himself as being center-right.
He said in an interview with Fox News in 2016 that he leans to the left on some issues, to the right on some issues, but overall he ends up leaning more towards the right.
“I’m a little bit more philosophical,” he told Fox News. “I had a philosophy major in college, so I’m always searching up river for how things started. I can be more excessive on either side. I can be really either left leaning or very very right leaning, but I end up center right. ”
In another interview with Fox, Allen described himself as a fiscal conservative.
“I’m what they call a fiscal conservative,” he said. “I like problem solving, and problem solving usually ordinates…a lot of it [is] about ‘How are we going to pay for this?’ My family’s all about that.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen said that he is all about self-reliance and low taxes.
“When you’re a young guy working the road and literally close to half of what you make goes to people who don’t help you at all but just bitch about it the whole time, that’s where I come from,” Allen said. “I come from “no taxation without representation,” and it manifests itself in very peculiar points of view.”
2. He Supported John Kasich for President in 2016
In 2016, Tim Allen supported John Kasich for president over Donald Trump.
“I went to see him at an L.A. town meeting, which is usually a very liberal forum,” Allen said in an interview, according to The Washington Times. “…He talked about poor people — the underprivileged and the working poor. It was very un-Republican. He’s a Republican that a Democrat could vote for.”
In an interview with Fox News, Allen said that Kasich has the strongest resume.
“He’s really got a great resume, and the guy’s got a good heart,” Allen said.
In fact, Allen went a step further than just voicing support for Kasich in interviews; he also lent his voice to a Kasich ad.
“Being president is more than the economy or healthcare,” Allen said in the commercial advocating for John Kasich for president. “There is a place for quiet strength: the Oval Office.”
3. He Has Expressed Some Support for Donald Trump & Attended His Inauguration
Donald Trump was clearly Tim Allen’s preferred candidate over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election, but that’s not to say he was fully on board the Trump train.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen indicated that he doesn’t like some of Trump’s extreme rhetoric.
“Trump can’t send everybody to Mexico or whatever the f— he said,” Allen said.
Allen also said in an interview with Megyn Kelly that he doesn’t like some of Trump’s comments about women. Allen said that he thinks his character on Last Man Standing would be a Trump supporter at first but would be turned off by Trump’s comments about Megyn Kelly.
In January 2017, Tim Allen attended the inauguration of Donald Trump. Allen said on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he did so to support veterans, as he went to the veterans’ inauguration ball. On the show, he seemed nervous about admitting that he went to the inauguration, saying that he is demonized whenever he expresses any degree of openness towards Donald Trump.
“You’ve gotta be real careful around here,” Allen said. “You get beat up if don’t believe what everybody believes. This is like ’30s Germany. I don’t know what happened. If you’re not part of the group, ‘you know what we believe is right,’ I go, ‘Well, I might have a problem with that.'”
Tim Allen was interviewed by Fox News at the inauguration itself, and he said that while he attended the event to support the military, he does generally support Donald Trump.
“At one point, Trump said things that made sense to me,” he said. “At some points, the Democrats didn’t. And that’s it.”
Allen went on to say that there are a lot of smart people inside of Trump’s cabinet. Allen said, however, that Trump isn’t perfect and that he should “take Twitter lessons.”
4. On His Show, He Called Obama a Dictator & Wanted to Call Him a Communist
On Last Man Standing, Tim Allen’s character Mike Baxter frequently insulted President Barack Obama. In fact, Allen once tried to air a joke on the show in which the 44th president raises the communist flag at the White House. However, Allen says that ABC objected to this and would not let the joke air.
“We got network notes saying you can’t call the president a communist,” Allen told The Hollywood Reporter. “So, of course, I really wanted to. I do it in rehearsal all day long.”
However, Allen has gotten away with calling Obama a “dictator” on the show.
In general, though, Allen has said that he wasn’t the only one pushing for jokes making fun of the left. He says that his writing staff consisted entirely of liberals and that sometimes even they would write jokes that were so politically incorrect that he would not want to include them.
“We’re getting away with a lot of stuff,” Allen told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m really shocked. This is a meaner, sharper comedy than I’m used to. There’s a lot of times our very liberal writing staff will come up with stuff that even my character would say, “I don’t know if I can say that.”
5. He Made Fun of Hillary Clinton on His Show, Saying She Gets Scarier the More You Get to Know Her
Tim Allen criticized Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, both off camera and on his show Last Man Standing.
Allen had said going into the most recent season that he wasn’t sure the network would let him mock Hillary Clinton as much as he would like.
“It will be horrible [for me] personally if Hillary continues [to be the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election], but it will be great for the story line,” Allen said, according to The TV Page.
However, he ended up getting away with quite a bit. In one episode of the show, for example, Mike Baxter says, “You see, the world is kind of the opposite of Hillary Clinton: it actually gets less scary the better you know it.”
In another episode of the show, Allen’s character Mike Baxter gets a fundraising letter from Hillary Clinton, and he says, “Hillary Clinton’s asking us for money. Will her string of mistakes never end?” Baxter also says that this sort of mistake will happen when you “spend all your free time deleting emails.” Another character responds, “The hits keep on coming, but she’ll never top Benghazi. That’s her ‘Stairway to Heaven.‘”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen compared the Clintons to a sexually-transmitted disease.
“…[T]he Clintons are like herpes: Just when you think they’re gone, they show up again,” Allen said.