George Clooney has praised President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as the probable reason for the unlikely peace talks between the U.S. and North Korea.

In an op-ed, co-written for Foreign Affairs magazine, Clooney credits President Trump’s sanctions as the primary impetus for bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table:

Although it may be too early to say, the fact that Leader Kim Jong Un agreed to a moratorium on missile testing—and that there is now an expected meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump in the works (as controversial as it might be)—suggests that the sanctions over the last year or so have worked. So far, the current administration has sanctioned more North Korean targets than were sanctioned during the entire Obama presidency.

Such praise for Trump from Clooney is somewhat unexpected, given that the actor is an outspoken Democrat who has previously been very critical of the President.

The comments – made in the course of a sensible, measured article about the problem of corruption in Africa – may be seen as an attempt to position Clooney as a credible candidate for the 2020 presidency.

Roger Friedman at Showbiz411 reports:

George Clooney has been laying low in the film business recently. But he’s been getting more active politically. I told you a few weeks ago that he was donating $500,000 to the March 24th March for Our Lives. Now Clooney and John Prendergast have co-written an Op Ed piece for “Foreign Affairs” magazine on how to achieve peace in Africa. In the piece, titled “The Key to Making Peace in Africa: Fighting Corruption Can Help End Conflict,” Clooney and Prendergast, the actor’s partner in The Sentry, a project of Clooney’s South Sudan effort called Not On Our Watch.

When Clooney was asked last year about whether he was interested in running for president, he said, “Would I like to be the next president? Oh, that sounds like fun.”

Perhaps he wasn’t joking, after all.