Sophia Bush called her online critics a “Christian fascist cesspool” while explaining why she avoids reading comments about herself. The “One Tree Hill” actress also took aim at President Donald Trump in a separate interview, saying she deliberately left his name out of her account of the 2016 election. Asked why, Bush drew a comparison to the way people talk about school shooters.
Both sets of remarks surfaced on October 27th, the day Bush released her memoir, *And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress*. Bush, 44, campaigned for Barack Obama during his first presidential bid in 2008. Her book takes readers inside the Obama White House for a farewell party held after Hillary Clinton lost the election to Trump.
Bush recalled nearly missing the party because she had overlooked an email. A friend in the Obama administration called her the day of the event, prompting her to change her flight and head to Washington. She landed in sweatpants and stopped at a Saks Off 5th to find something she could wear to the White House that night. She called the chapter “The Last Dance Party.”
In her interview with The Hill’s Judy Kurtz, Bush discussed how she wrote about Trump. In the book, she blamed misogyny for Clinton’s defeat and described the Democrat as the most qualified person ever to run for president. When Kurtz raised the omission of Trump’s name, Bush said someone who encourages the worst in people “doesn’t really deserve to have their name spoken.”
Bush explained whose names she thinks the public ought to remember after a school shooting. She said the children who were killed deserve to be named, while the person who shot them should be denied that attention. Turning back to Trump’s record, she faulted his leadership on the economy and said he had made conditions worse for women over the past decade. She pledged to keep criticizing his actions until he leaves office.
Bush had a different complaint about the attention she receives online. In an October 27th post on X, Variety quoted the actress describing what she believes draws particular hostility from commenters. “This household voting manosphere Christian fascist cesspool really hates a woman who says, ‘I was unhappy, so I made a different decision,’” Bush said.
Watch Bush discuss Trump and her decision to leave his name out of her book here:
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In an interview with People published October 28th, Bush described the effort it takes to put strangers’ comments about her marriage to former soccer player Ashlyn Harris out of her mind. She said she has to remind herself that what she knows about her own relationship matters more than whatever version of it people online find exciting. “It’s not easy to deal with the kind of abusiveness that digital media makes possible,” she said.
By Bush’s own account, the reason she avoids the comments is how hard they are to shake once she’s read them. “I don’t open myself up to it because if I do, then it’s in,” she told Variety. “Nobody wants to hear a privileged entertainer say that it’s hard, but it’s actually deeply traumatizing to be met with so much vitriol all the time, especially because these platforms algorithmically surface those things.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.