‘The View’ Hosts Slam Billy Bob Thornton for ‘Bragging’ About ‘Being Uninformed’ About Politics

Whoopi Goldberg and her The View cohosts had strong opinions about Billy Bob Thornton’s recent remarks about politics.

“I’m not really big on like at award shows, all of a sudden [they] start talking about saving the badgers and stuff,” Thornton, 70, said during the May 5 episode of Howie Mandel’s Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast. “I don’t know anything about politics. I have no idea. And the stuff that I believe about it, I don’t want to force it down somebody else’s throat because I’m not an expert on that.”

His comments did not sit well with the women of The View, who slammed the Landman actor on the Tuesday, May 12 episode.

“Imagine bragging about how uninformed you are. ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about politics,’” Joy Behar mocked. “You’re an American citizen, don’t you read the paper?”

Sarah Haines partially agreed with Thornton’s wish to not “force” his views on others. 

“I don’t think that every celebrity needs to scream from the mountaintop what their thoughts are, because I’d much rather see them march door to door and recruit people voting in your local government,” she explained.

But Sunny Hostin jumped in to say that we are at “a crisis point” in the United States.

“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,” she said. “In my view, silence is complicity…If now is not the time, I don’t know when is.”

Thornton shared similar ideology during a November 2025 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

“Don’t go up there and talk about saving the badgers in Wisconsin or something, you know what I’m saying?” he said at the time. “How about this? If you have a billion dollars, and you want to save the badgers, f**king save them. I mean, you got plenty of money to save the badgers, trust me. That is not, that’s barely gonna cut into your budget.”