Sophia Bush refused to say President Donald Trump’s name during an interview promoting her new memoir, prompting a reply from a viewer who didn’t recognize her name at all. The “One Tree Hill” actress drew a comparison to the way people talk about school shooters when she explained why she wouldn’t name the president. An X user who saw the clip had a question about her acting credits. “Was she in some weekend production that I missed?”
Bush sat down with Judy Kurtz, The Hill’s “In the Know” columnist, to discuss her acting career and political work as she promoted “And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress.” Bush played Brooke Davis on “One Tree Hill” and spent four seasons as Detective Erin Lindsay on “Chicago P.D.” By the time of the interview, she was also campaigning for Democrats ahead of the November midterms.
The Hill posted a 37-second clip of the interview on October 27th. It showed Bush speaking to Kurtz under a banner that read “Sophia Bush on Acting and Activism.” The outlet introduced her as an actress in the opening word of its caption, then singled out her contention that Trump didn’t deserve to have his name spoken.
It was that first word a viewer picked up on in a reply to the clip that afternoon. “Actress? I have never heard of her,” wrote the account, which goes by DB and uses the handle @DB32779065. The same user followed up in the next line with the crack about a weekend production.
As The American Tribune previously reported, Bush also left Trump’s name out of the memoir itself, including when she wrote about his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. Bush explained her reasoning in the interview with Kurtz. “I think someone who chooses to exemplify and bolster the very worst of human tendency doesn’t really deserve to have their name spoken,” Bush said.
Bush brought up the children killed in school shootings. “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,” she told Kurtz. “When you are wreaking terror on a community, I don’t think you deserve to be a star,” she added.
Watch Bush discuss President Trump in the clip that prompted the reply:
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Bush, who campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008, also offered Kurtz a prediction about how Democrats would fare in November. She said Trump “has made things so much worse for women in the last 10 years” and added, “I know we’re fed up, and I know plenty of men are fed up, too.” Looking ahead to Election Day, she said, “we should see greater than a blue wave — we should see a blue landslide.”
Kurtz also asked whether it had been a difficult decision for Bush to get involved in politics back in 2008, when Obama was a senator running for president. Bush answered with a question of her own. “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.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.