Ellen DeGeneres responded late Monday night to online criticism over pictures and videos of her engaging with former President George W. Bush at Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys vs. Green Bay Packers game, posting a Twitter video to detail “the whole story.”
“They thought, ‘Why is a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to a conservative Republican president?’” DeGeneres said of those who criticized her. “A lot of people were mad and they did what people do when they’re mad: They tweet.”
People did tweet. They also wrote about it, notably in a piece for LGBT magazine The Advocate. That article pointed out that DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, were sitting next to and joking around with a man who “campaigned for reelection in 2004 largely on a promise for a constitutional amendment prohibiting marriage equality.”
In the four-minute monologue posted Monday night, DeGeneres laid out her response to that particular point.
“Here’s the thing: 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.
She continued, “But just because I don’t agree with someone on everything doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be friends with them. When I say, ‘Be kind to one another,’ I don’t only mean the people that think the same way that you do. I mean be kind to everyone.”
Yes, that was me at the Cowboys game with George W. Bush over the weekend. Here’s the whole story. pic.twitter.com/AYiwY5gTIS
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) October 8, 2019