, you’ve got a friend in Dirty Harry, aka .

Though a longtime follower of John McCain — dating back to the Arizona senator’s 2000 run against George W. Bush in the GOP primary — Clint Eastwood thinks Clinton deserves some serious respect. And enough already with the calls for her to quit. 

“Everybody’s trying to talk her into folding, but it doesn’t seem like the spirit of Americana,” Eastwood told Politico before heading to France’s Cannes Film Festival, where his period kidnapping drama “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie, had its world premiere Tuesday. 

“Put yourself in the place of [Clinton]: You’ve gone out there and made a thousand speeches, and you’ve shaken a million hands and you’ve been out there working your ass off,” Eastwood said. “And then somebody comes up and says, ‘Why don’t you just drop out of it?’” 

The actor/director/producer/jazz aficionado — who had his own brush with politics as mayor of Carmel, Calif. — said Clinton’s fortunes could change: Barack Obama could trip over himself again, as he did with the controversies over his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s remarks about working-class voters clinging to their religion and guns. 

I watch Hillary Clinton and feel kind of sorry for her and wonder, ‘What are all these people telling her to run away for?’” Clint Eastwood said. “She’s showing her strength by hanging in there.”