A celebrity’s self-awareness severely triggered some of the co-hosts on ABC’s “The View” who fell back on a familiar refrain akin to “silence is violence.”
Too often, a camera or a microphone placed near some self-righteous Hollywood elitist — or sought after by the truly insufferable — proves like a flame for a moth, enticing them to pontificate with feelings instead of facts. Actor Billy Bob Thornton’s position against doing that proved too much for co-hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin, who insisted an “outsized voice” amounted to an obligation to speak.
“Imagine bragging about how uninformed you are,” said Behar after a clip was played of Thornton’s recent appearance on Howie Mandel’s “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast, where he said, “I’m not really big on, like, at awards shows all of a sudden you start talking about saving the badgers and stuff like that. Like, Ricky Gervais said, get your little award and f*ck off, you know what I mean?”
BILLY BOB THORNTON: “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT POLITICS”: ‘The View’ co-hosts weigh in on the actor’s recent comments where he dismissed celebrity activism. pic.twitter.com/3iAGHfaXyi
— The View (@TheView) May 12, 2026
“I don’t know anything about politics. I have no idea. I mean, and the stuff that I believe about it, I don’t want to force it down somebody else’s throat ’cause I’m not an expert on that,” continued the “Landman” star who’d referenced Gervais’ 2020 Golden Globes remarks where the comedian said to the celebrity audience, “You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god, and then f*ck off.”
“Well, I think he’s saying more like, I’m not an expert. So my opinion-” tried co-host Sara Haines, only to be cut off by Behar, who continued, “No. ‘I don’t know anything about politics.’ You’re an American citizen. Don’t you want to … don’t you read the paper?”
Likewise, after Haines expressed her belief that celebrities don’t need to “scream from the mountaintop what their thoughts are,” but instead ought to promote civic participation, Hostin insisted, “I actually do think you have an obligation. I think we are at a crisis point in this country. I think democracy is participatory. I think when you have a platform, that means you 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.”
“In my view, silence is complicity,” she added.
Thornton’s recent take was not the only time he’s spoken out against sounding off as he and podcast host Joe Rogan reminisced about political disagreements in the past where, as Rogan put it, people “didn’t f*ckin’ disavow each other because you voted for the wrong person, like this is bizarre.”
Worth noting, Alyssa Farah Griffin raised a point about the upheaval among her peers when George Clooney used his “outsized voice” to pen an op-ed against then-President Joe Biden’s ongoing 2024 presidential campaign. “That is a celebrity using his voice, saying what he believes. It can’t just be when they agree with your position.”
As it happened, Thornton similarly stuck it to “The View” when his Paramount+ show described the talk show as “a bunch of pissed-off millionaires b*tching about how much they hate millionaires — and [President Donald] Trump and men and you and me and everybody else they got a bee up their a** about.”
Landman episode throws punch at The View …‘bunch of pissed off millionaires b*tching’ about millionaires’ https://t.co/ZpqNVu1IRN
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) December 15, 2025
Readily demonstrating that a platform does not inherently justify opining, Behar added, “And every minute, every day, it’s getting closer. And every minute, every day, we go closer to an autocracy in this country. We’re about to lose it. I think that people don’t seem to understand what’s going on.”
