Sylvester Stallone declared Donald Trump “the second George Washington” while introducing the president elect at an event at the Mar-A-Lago Club. The actor spoke ahead of Trump the America First Policy Institute gala, praising the Republican victor and comparing him to his character in Rocky.

Stallone opened his speech by recalling his 1976 classic film, reminding the audience of the movie’s beginning sequence where the camera pans out from a picture of Jesus onto Rocky Balboa being hit. “At that moment, he was a chosen person and that’s how I began the journey — something was gonna happen, this man was gonna go through a metamorphosis and change lives,” Stallone said, via CSPAN. “Just like President Trump.”

He continued, “We’re in the presence of a really mythical character. I love mythology. And this individual does not exist on this planet. Nobody in the world could have pulled off what he pulled off, so I’m in awe. I’ll just say this — and I mean it. When George Washington defended his country, he had no idea that he was going to change the world. Because without him, you could imagine what the world would look like. Guess what? We got the second George Washington. Congratulations!”

Stallone did not endorse a candidate in the recent election, or in 2020. However, in 2016 he told Variety he that he was a fan of Trump. “I love Donald Trump,” he said in a cover story for the magazine. “He’s a great Dickensian character. You know what I mean? There are certain people like Arnold, Babe Ruth, that are bigger than life. But I don’t know how that translates to running the world.”

In 2018, during Trump’s first term as president, Stallone visited the Oval Office after making a personal appeal to get a posthumous presidential pardon for legendary boxer Jack Johnson. At the time, Stallone called Trump’s decision “incredible” and “a long time coming.”