Sophia Bush has resurfaced with a new book to promote, and her latest promotional appearance seems to be a fresh smear of President Donald Trump. The “One Tree Hill” star announced that she refuses to say his name because he “doesn’t really deserve” to have it spoken, comparing that refusal to withholding the names of school shooters. The comments come as she campaigns for her party ahead of the November midterms.
Bush rose to fame as Brooke Davis on “One Tree Hill” and spent four seasons playing Detective Erin Lindsay on “Chicago P.D.” She has been a fixture of Democratic politics since 2008, when she campaigned for Barack Obama across the country. The interview, timed to the release of her new memoir, “And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress,” covers her career, her activism, and her apparent refusal to say Trump’s name.
Asked to explain the refusal, Bush didn’t hold back. “I think someone who chooses to exemplify and bolster the very worst of human tendency doesn’t really deserve to have their name spoken,” she said. Then came the comparison to withholding school shooters’ names: “It’s the same reason that I think it’s incredibly important to speak the names of school children that are lost in school shootings, and not the name of the school shooter.” “When you are wreaking terror on a community, I don’t think you deserve to be a star,” she added.
As The Independent reported, Trump’s name omission runs through the memoir as well. According to the outlet, Bush never mentions Trump by name in the book, but writes that he “won on bluster and wildly crass tendencies” in the 2016 election. Even a chapter about a star-studded bash during President Obama’s final days in office turns on the same criticism. “Despite running the most qualified person for president to date, misogyny had prevailed at the end of 2016,” Bush wrote of his win over Hillary Clinton.
Bush made the remarks to The Hill‘s “In the Know” columnist Judy Kurtz. She told Kurtz that Trump “has made things so much worse for women in the last 10 years.” “I know we’re fed up, and I know plenty of men are fed up, too,” she said. “And it’s about time that we take the nation back and choose to elect leaders that might not own people in a tweet but get the job done.”
Her description of the country under his leadership was bleaker still. She said it was “absolutely abhorrent what’s happening in our country, in our economy, and in our culture right now because of that man’s leadership,” adding, “so no, I’m not particularly interested in saying his name.” Asked if she might tone it down for the sake of her career, Bush said, “What would I do? Silence myself? Take away one of my most important rights to be more palatable or more hirable to people I don’t know? That’s not something that I’m interested in.”
Watch the full interview here:
"*" indicates required fields
Bush is predicting a successful November for Democrats. “I think the midterms are really an opportunity for us to leave it all on the field and hopefully claw back some of the democracy that our great republic is meant to operate with and signify in the world,” she said. “I think if we’re just going on the numbers, on American sentiment and on the reality that’s hit so many people, we should see greater than a blue wave — we should see a blue landslide,” she continued, adding that she is backing Democratic candidates nationwide.
Bush’s recent appearances have prompted many viewers to swear off her work altogether. Responding to a Variety post about her criticism of the “manosphere,” one X user wrote that “after this bigoted rant I look forward to seeing her name and finding a reason to avoid whatever she’s in.” Another user responded to coverage of the controversy over her marriage advice by declaring, “I won’t watch a movie with her in it now that I know her name.”
Other commenters challenged Bush’s claim that she ignores online criticism and accused her of hypocrisy. “I have never seen anyone that believed their own hype more than her,” another user wrote beneath the Variety post. Another poster criticized her remarks about Christianity and mocked the planned revival of the show that she was most known for, writing, “how’s that feminist one tree revival babe.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.