Tonight is Hollywood’s biggest night, the 96th Academy Awards, when the liberal bubble of the movie industry puts on a TV show expecting the rest of the nation to pay rapt attention. So it’s a good time to dig out the absolute worst quotes we’ve collected over the years from the “stars,” as they championed their favorite liberal politicians and badmouthed conservatives.
Democrats, the Hollywood elite tells us, are virtual deities walking amongst us. Back in 2012, actor Jamie Foxx saluted “our lord and savior, Barack Obama,” during the Soul Train Awards on BET. “It would be wonderful to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,” actress Gwyneth Paltrow not-so-constitutionally enthused at a Democratic fundraiser for Obama in 2014.
But Republicans are foul creatures who need to be exterminated. “If we were in other countries,” actor Alec Baldwin screamed after Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, “we would stone [GOP Congressman] Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and children!” Nearly two decades later, actor George Takei sneered that Justice Clarence Thomas was “a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court....He is a disgrace to America.”
It’s not just nasty rhetoric; they put their money where their mouths are. According to data published by the Center for Responsive Politics, so far in the 2023-24 political cycle, the top 20 contributors from the “motion picture production and distribution industry” have already donated a combined $3.35 million to Democratic candidates and liberal groups, vs. a piddly $1,070 to Republicans and conservative groups. Expect that disparity to grow as the election nears.
There are a few conservatives in Hollywood, of course, but they are massively outnumbered by the leftists, liberals and progressives, who are routinely invited onto chat shows and TV news shows to promote their views. From the Media Research Center’s archives, the 20 worst quotes from the Hollywood Left:
■ “The President [Bill Clinton] is very popular and things are going pretty good and they are voting to impeach the President....If we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone [Republican Congressman] Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! [crowd cheers] Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families!”
— Actor Alec Baldwin on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien, December 11, 1998.
■ “I despise him [President George W. Bush]. I despise his administration and everything they stand for....To my mind the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man’s leadership....And I think this latest thing with Iraq is absolute madness....There has to be a movement now to really oppose what he is proposing because it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral and basically illegal....It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It’s humiliating.”
— Actress Jessica Lange at a September 25, 2002 press conference at an international film festival in San Sebastian, Spain where she was given a lifetime achievement award.
■ Host Craig Kilborn: “Use the words ‘compassionate’ and ‘conservative’ in the same sentence while being neither ironic nor scornful.”
Actor/activist Tim Robbins: “That’s a tough one. Neither ironic nor scornful?”
Kilborn: “Yeah.”
Robbins: “Alright. F*** compassionate conservatives!”
— Exchange on CBS’s Late Late Show, October 30, 2003.
■ “I wondered to myself during ‘Shock and Awe,’ I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?”
— Actress Meryl Streep at a July 8, 2004 Kerry-Edwards fundraiser held at Radio City Music Hall, as quoted by the next day’s Boston Globe.
■ “Let’s face it: If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamned wars in the first place.”
— Actress Sally Field at the Emmy awards, September 16, 2007.
■ “Hitler, by the way, never got more than 33 percent of the vote ever in Germany....He wasn’t a majority guy, but he was charismatic, and they were having bad economic times — just like we are now. People were out of work, they needed jobs, and a guy came along and rallied the troops. My fear is that the Tea Party gets a charismatic leader, because all they’re selling is fear and anger and that’s all Hitler sold: ‘I’m angry and I’m frightened and you should hate that guy over there.’”
— Actor/director/liberal activist Rob Reiner on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, October 22, 2010.
■ “Look at, look, the Tea Partiers, who are controlling the Republican Party....Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What’s, what does that, what underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we do to get this black man, we can, we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.’... It is a racist thing.”
— Actor Morgan Freeman on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, September 23, 2011.
■ “You have what I call the ‘Get the N-word out of the White House party,’ the Tea Party.... At the end of the day, there’s a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, ‘Can we just lynch him?’”
— Actor Sean Penn on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, October 14, 2011.
■ “If ROMNEY gets elected I don’t know if i can breathe same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters”
— Actress/singer Cher in a May 8, 2012 Twitter posting that was later deleted (grammar and punctuation as in the original).
■ “First of all, give an honor to God and our lord and savior Barack Obama!”
— Actor Jamie Foxx during the Soul Train Awards, November 25, 2012 on BET.
■ “I am one of your biggest fans, if not the biggest, and have been since the inception of your campaign....It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass...You’re so handsome that I can’t speak properly.”
— Actress Gwyneth Paltrow introducing President Obama at an October 9, 2014 DNC fundraiser held at her Los Angeles home.
■ “I mean, obviously, I love Hillary Rodham Clinton....And so seeing her talk about early childhood vulnerability and brain development. Man, that woman is stout. She is stout. So yes, I will be all in when the time comes....I think she might be the most overqualified candidate we’ve had since, you know, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.”
— Actress/activist Ashley Judd on Larry King Now, January 30, 2015.
■ “He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there....This man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.”
— Actor George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek, talking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a June 30, 2015 interview with Fox 10 in Phoenix, Arizona
■ “Can we bring Trump here?...I think he needs help...When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”
— Actor Johnny Depp at Glastonbury Festival in England on June 22, 2017.
■ “He’s a Nazi. He wants no judicial process. He kidnapped children and commits acts of violence for political gain and to support his racist views. He admires violent dictators. Trump is a Nazi. The debate is over. Soon we will have proof he is a Nazi supported by the Russians.”
— June 25, 2018 tweet by director Judd Apatow.
■ “It’s no longer the Republican Party to me. It’s the Rape Party.”
— October 4, 2018 tweet by actress Molly Ringwald.
■ “I’m happy to stand with Samantha Bee tonight to support the First Amendment, the right of the President to be a relentless and unrepentant lying scumbag, the right of his supporters to not give a shit and our right to do something about it...Impeachment or not, there will be an election. Unless Mitch McConnell can figure out a way to stop that vote, too.”
— Actor Robert De Niro at TBS’s Samantha Bee’s Not The White House Correspondents Dinner, April 27, 2019.
■ “Trump is responsible for more deaths than Kennedy Johnson and Nixon. He will go down in history as the Stalin of incompetence and greed.”
— April 22, 2020 tweet by actress Ellen Barkin.
■ “Screw politics. Screw poll numbers. Joe Biden has a record of accomplishments in the first two years of his Presidency that has gone unmatched for almost 60 years.”
— July 29, 2022 tweet by filmmaker Rob Reiner.
■ Actress Jane Fonda: “We’re not going back. I don’t care what the laws are. We’re not going back….It’s true. It’s the truth. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to fight.”
Co-host Joy Behar: “Besides marching and protesting, what else do you suggest?”
Fonda: “Well, it does involve murder.”
— ABC’s The View, March 10, 2023.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
