Billy Bob Thornton has never been one to mince words or not let his words be known. But the Landman star inadvertently started a feud among The View hosts.
Thornton recently criticized celebrities for being so outspoken about politics. The actor appeared on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast and slammed those who tried to force political beliefs on others. It’s something that Thornton found distasteful.
“I don’t know anything about politics,” Thornton said. “I have no idea. And the stuff that I do believe, I don’t want to force it down somebody else’s throat because I’m not an expert on that.”
Billy Bob Thornton Shares His View
As you can imagine, The View hosts didn’t like the actor’s opinion. The View has regularly been accused of bias politics, and the show’s hosts regularly use the programming as a platform. Several of the hosts criticized Thornton with only co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin calling them out on their hypocrisy.
Co-host Joy Behar said of Thornton, “Imagine bragging about how uninformed you are.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed, “We are at a crisis point in this country. I think democracy is participatory. I think when you have a platform, that means I have an outsized voice and when you have a platform, I think that you have a responsibility to speak up about what’s going on in this country and my view silence is complicity. We need every single ally to speak out.”
However, Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin ignited a feud between the hosts. She said, “A, Billy Bob Thornton is one of my favorite actors. I’m never going to say a bad word about him, starting with that. But B, a lot of this table criticized George Clooney when he wrote his Biden op-ed.”
“That is a celebrity using his voice, saying what he believes, it can’t just be when they agree with your position,” Griffin added.
“He can say it and I can criticize it, that’s called free speech,” Behar shot back.
But Griffin argued that many celebrities sent out baseless political statements without performing any actual work in politics.
“I don’t think we should bully people,” she added, “saying, ‘You have to speak out.'”
