Gina Carano Gives a Speech at a Trump Rally

Gina Carano took a quick break from fighting Disney and Lucasfilm to fight for our country. Yesterday, the actress and former MMA fighter who played Cara Dune on The Mandalorian (and almost on Rangers of the New Republic) gave a speech at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas hosted by political advocacy group Turning Point USA. And this wasn’t just a rally in support of him (not to say there’s anything wrong with those); President Trump was there and spoke a while after Carano was finished. She talked about her firing from Star Wars, of course, and the lawsuit she filed against them with Elon Musk’s help, as well as a host of other topics – freedom of speech, child trafficking, the importance of voting, her love for her country and Las Vegas, and her support of President Trump. You can watch Gina Carano’s entire speech below:

It’s rewarding to see Gina Carano at an event like this because it demonstrates what an important figure in the fight to retain freedom of speech and expression she’s become. And she offers a unique voice you don’t always get at Trump rallies. A lot of the people you expect to see were there: Vivek Ramaswamy, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Jack Posobiec, and more. But Carano has never spoken at a political event like this, and she’s mostly avoided specific politics outside of her fight with Disney. Before this appearance, you could make an educated guess about who she supported, but I don’t think she’s ever flatly said she supported Trump. But you can only push someone so far, and while I don’t doubt she’d have preferred to keep her politics private, she’s been attacked and had her life turned upside down simply for not wanting to participate in the politicization of everything under the sun. The same was true of her legal backer, Elon Musk, who has said he didn’t want to enter the political fray but felt he had to when the left tried to destroy him simply for allowing everyone to speak. There’s a great line in the Daredevil comic Born Again where, after destroying Matt Murdock’s life but failing to kill him, the Kingpin laments, “And I – I have shown him… that a man without hope… is a man without fear.” When you take everything from someone like the left (in the guise of Disney and Lucasfilm) did to Gina Carano, they stripped away her fear of them – although in her case, I hesitate to say “fear;” maybe “reluctance” is a better word.

And you can see that in her speech, which is effective partly because it’s so human. Gina Carano begins by saying she’d rather be in a mixed martial arts fight than speak publicly, a sentiment many people who can’t fight as well as she can share with her. It puts the audience in the mindset that she’s one of us, and her conflict with Disney only strengthens that impression. This isn’t just an actor endorsing a candidate but someone revealing what the big studios are really like, how they’ll gleefully crush the individual as soon as one doesn’t conform (over pronouns, of all ridiculous things). It opens up a slightly different world to the people who attend these rallies; I’m sure many in the audience knew who Carano was and what Disney did to her, but many others didn’t. That’s why I’m also glad that, in addition to quoting The Bible, she quoted Mr. Robot, a cult show that aired on the USA network. The quote was appropriate for Carano and the candidate she supports, but it comes from a place mostly geeks know of, and it was delivered by someone who starred in a Star Wars TV show and a Deadpool movie. It’s letting a mainstream audience know there are more like-minded people out there than they may think and in places they probably don’t suspect. But I’m glad for Gina Carano; I don’t know her, and I don’t want to speak for her, but I imagine it feels good for her to be asked to speak at such a prestigious event after Disney tried to make her disappear. She’s back with a vengeance now.