Viewers tore into TV comedian Ellen DeGeneres after she offered a lukewarm ‘can’t we all just get along’ explanation for laughing it up with former president and regime-change aficionado George W. Bush at a football game.
Assuming the fans’ initial rage had to do with “a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to a conservative Republican president” at a Dallas Cowboys football game over the weekend, DeGeneres stressed that just because her political views didn’t align with the president who started two long and bloody wars, didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends.
“I’m friends with George Bush. In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have,” she said on her show on Tuesday, comparing her disagreements with Bush to disagreeing with her “friends who wear fur.”
“We’re all different and I think we’ve forgotten that it’s OK that we’re all different,” she continued earnestly, imploring her viewers to “be kind” to those unlike themselves.
Here’s the thing, Ellen, George W. Bush is a war criminal who is responsible for death on a cataclysmic scale. It’s not a matter of being friends with people with different beliefs—we all have those friends—it’s about having a little perspective on the damage he’s done. https://t.co/7FJTqPEfb8
Social media users quickly reminded her that it wasn’t Bush’s political opinions they took issue with, but his actions while in office.
There's a difference between "my conservative friend and I disagree on politics" and "I'm friends with Mussolini. He's actually really nice in person."
Liberals have literally rehabilitated George Bush from the war criminal that killed over one million Iraqis based on lies, to the man that passes Michelle Obama candy, and hangs out with Ellen DeGeneres on weekends.
Christ, Ellen. The guy is a war criminal of epic proportions. His ginned up illegal war on Iraq led to the death/displacement of a million people. For God's sake, his family funded the Nazis.
The arguments were that Bush wasn’t exactly a fan of the LGBT community. “He would lock you and Portia in separate cages if you weren’t both rich,” pointed out one user, referring to the actress DeGeneres married in 2008, while another mentioned he had campaigned against gay marriage.
Others reasoned that when one moves in DeGeneres’ elite circles, it’s impossible to avoid running into a few war criminals – or suggested that part of her job was making such “monsters” palatable to the general population.
Ellen's brain/heart/soul has been fossilized by all that corporate ca$h. it's proven that one's ability to empathize is greatly diminished the more money one has.. more cash = less humane. less cash = more humane.
— Lightnin Riddle's Mamaw Residue (@kymountainwoman) October 8, 2019
When some of Ellen’s fellow TV personalities stepped in to back her up, they, too, got shredded.
how many of your friends are war criminals i wonder
DeGeneres isn’t the only liberal to embrace Bush in his later years, helping him reinvent himself from a wildly unpopular commander-in-chief to a simple old man painting pictures of cats and world leaders. President Barack Obama and his aides also discovered a fondness for his predecessor after Trump came into the White House.
