Tim Robbins Takes Ellen to Task Over Her Friendship with George Bush

Watching not just reading what someone said in the 20th-century communication world is as simple as pressing some buttons. There should be no question of how George Bush behaved towards the gay community. Everything from DADT (don't ask don't tell) to gay marriage and there is a lot of dirty water in between particularly with education, judges and all those things that a President can do to keep a community he hates down. But G.Bush did not hate the gay community, he had secret gay friends and saw it as purely political moves.

Except for the people he hurt were not just a political strategy but people wanting to get what they deserve: Equality!  That is what gets me about Bush. I can respect someone that has a problem because of the way they were brought up with anti-gay schooling, Church and family. But someone that can see how unjust we were being treated, a community of men, women and children but not only refuses to get on their side but takes the opposite side knowing full well which is the family side, the just side. He took the side that said we were anti-family but he was for the family. That is why I can't stand this man and to see someone in the gay community, someone well known for taking their friendship public it makes all the things that Bush did against the community mute. Today that LGBT rights including marriage are being revisited by the Supreme court and local courts and so many rights we still don't have in most of the states like adoption, hate crimes, etc. We are not there yet and is too early to declare an amnesty on our enemies.
Adam Gonalez

Clarissa-Jan LimBuzzFeed News Reporter Actor Tim Robbins weighed in on Ellen DeGeneres' controversial friendship with former president George W. Bush, calling her out for "making peace" with someone who is "responsible for a lot of death."

In an interview on BuzzFeed News' AM to DM on Tuesday, Robbins, who stars in the upcoming movie Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo, spoke candidly about how society fails to hold people like Bush accountable for his role in the Iraq War. 

JJ Reddington/BuzzFeed News

"Listen, I'm all for going across aisles and making peace with people, but there are certain people that are walking around right now that are responsible for a lot of death," Robbins said. "That is, for me, something [Bush] has never reckoned with, never taken responsibility for."

The Iraq War led to tens of thousands of deaths and a devastating humanitarian crisis, and it's been widely denounced as a massive foreign policy mistake.

The video of DeGeneres and Bush sitting together at a Dallas Cowboys game last month sparked a flood of angry responses from people who pointed out his role in the war and his record on LGBTQ rights, among other things.

DeGeneres later responded in a monologue on her show, defending her friendship with people like Bush who "don't share the same beliefs that I have."

"Just because I don't agree with someone on everything, it doesn't mean that I'm not gonna be friends with them," she said, adding that it was important to be kind to people who "don't think the same way you do."

Many celebrities came to DeGeneres' defense, praising her for her message about being "kind" to everyone.

Others, including Robbins' Dark Waters costar Ruffalo, criticized DeGeneres for seemingly portraying Bush as someone who simply has different opinions. 

In his interview Tuesday with BuzzFeed News, Robbins said Bush lives in "an elite bubble" where "you can do whatever the hell you want to in your life [and] pay no ramifications."

"I work with people in prison that have done a lot less than that that are spending years and years, if not their entire lives in prison for offenses. And they're paying for it, they know what they've done and they've accepted responsibility for it," he said. "Meanwhile, you have people going to football games and everything's fine, and oh, isn't it cute? No, it's not cute."