Billy Bob Thornton lit up Hollywood after telling celebrities to stop lecturing Americans about politics.
The “Landman” star ignited the debate during an appearance on the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast last week when he argued actors and entertainers are wildly unqualified to tell the public how to vote.
Thornton said he agreed with comedian Ricky Gervais’ now-famous award-show criticism of politically outspoken celebrities.
“Get your little award and f*** off,” Thornton said while paraphrasing Gervais.
The Oscar winner admitted he intentionally avoids publicly preaching about politics because he does not consider himself an expert.
“I don’t know anything about politics. I have no idea,” Thornton said.
“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.”
Thornton then turned his criticism toward celebrity culture itself, arguing Americans place far too much trust in famous people simply because they appear on television and movie screens.
“The fact that people put so much gravitas [into] this group of people that pretends things,” Thornton said.
“Just because you played a doctor doesn’t mean you are a doctor, just because you played a hero doesn’t make you a hero.”
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“And the people that listen to you, no matter how much we talk, they don’t know us,” he continued.
“It’s such a small circle of people that know you, know you enough to trust you in your opinion.”
The comments quickly detonated across social media before landing last Monday morning on “The View,” where Joy Behar reacted with open fury.
“Imagine bragging about how uninformed you are,” Behar snapped.
The longtime co-host then defended politically outspoken celebrities including Bruce Springsteen and Robert De Niro, both outspoken Trump critics.
Sunny Hostin escalated things even further, arguing silence from celebrities amounts to moral failure.
“We are at a crisis point in this country,” Hostin stated. “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 and my view silence is complicity,” she ranted. “We need every single ally to speak out.”
But the panel fractured when co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out that many liberals only celebrate celebrity activism when it supports causes they already agree with.
“A lot of this table criticized George Clooney when he wrote his Biden op-ed,” Griffin pointed out.
“That is a celebrity using his voice, saying what he believes, it can’t just be when they agree with your position.”
Behar immediately fired back. “He can say it and I can criticize it, that’s called free speech,” she snapped.
Griffin later argued celebrities should not be “bullied” into political activism and dismissed performative social media posting as “slacktivism.”
The argument over Thornton’s comments continued as another celebrity delivered an even harsher version of the same message.
Jack Osbourne was approached by a reporter Friday while leaving the Capitol alongside his mother Sharon after honoring his late father Ozzy Osbourne.
Exclusive: Jack Osbourne says celebs should STFU when it comes to politics… https://t.co/5baStiRScu pic.twitter.com/EmgJ90snqG
— TMZ (@TMZ) May 15, 2026
Before the reporter could even fully pivot into politics, Osbourne cut the conversation off.
“You know what, I think celebrities just need to keep their mouth shut,” Osbourne said.
The reality television personality then boiled his philosophy down even further.
“Make entertainment, entertain the people, shut the f**k up.”
The reporter continued pressing Osbourne about whether celebrities should use their fame to “change hearts and minds.”
Osbourne refused to budge. “Be a politician, don’t be an entertainer,” he replied.
While Thornton and Osbourne argued celebrities should stay away from politics entirely, filmmaker Adam McKay exploded in the opposite direction.
The white liberal director launched a furious attack on Democrats, fellow white liberals and the political establishment during an appearance on the “Urgent Futures” podcast.
McKay, the liberal “Anchorman” director who previously backed Sen. Bernie Sanders, accused affluent Democrats of protecting a broken political system while pretending to oppose it.
“We are being hit with the high-grade marketing and no group is worse than white liberals,” McKay said. “I mean, they are the worst.”
“I’ve tried to talk to them about the climate. They are so smug and captured,” he accused. “And it boils down to privilege.”
McKay argued wealthy liberals benefit too heavily from the current system to seriously challenge it.
“When you talk to white moneyed liberals, they’re getting a lot from this broken system,” he said.
The director then unloaded on Democrats for remaining loyal to party leadership despite years of political failures.
“It is incredible to watch people this far down the road still say you got to stand behind the Democrat Party,” McKay said.
“The same party that wouldn’t convict Trump of a crime after he told a crowd, ‘Go to the Capitol.’”
McKay also blasted Hillary Clinton and accused establishment Democrats of helping elevate Trump politically.
“The same party where the previous presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, literally funded Trump’s campaign,” he lashed out.
The filmmaker appeared to reference Clinton’s so-called “Pied Piper” media strategy during the 2016 election.
“At some point, I realized these are bad-faith arguments and conversations,” McKay stated.
He claimed that while separated by party lines, Democrats and Republicans are actually the same.
“Once you kind of flip that switch and realize white liberals are full-on right-wingers and the Republicans are extreme right-wingers, by any international definition of right/left wing, you can’t support a party that doesn’t want universal health care,” he went on. “The Democrats don’t have that in their party platform.”
McKay reserved some of his harshest language for former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“The level of damage those creeps [Bill Clinton and Barack Obama] have done to our country, white liberals don’t even want to hear about it,” McKay spat.
“So yeah, I almost can say I despise American white liberals. They are the grossest of the gross.”
The director formally left the Democratic Party after Trump’s 2024 election victory and said he planned to register either with the Green Party or the Working Families Party.