Progressives looked on Sunday as popular television personality Ellen DeGeneres attended a football game with former President George W. Bush and surmised that President Donald Trump will be subject to the same kind of image rehabilitation after he leaves office.
The two were caught by cameras laughing together and singing the national anthem with their respective spouses, Laura Bush and Portia de Rossi, during the Dallas Cowboys’ 34-24 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.
Reaction to the duo’s friendliness from progressives emphasized DeGeneres taking in the game with a man who ran for re-election in 2004 on a platform based in part on denying her civil rights and whose presidency upended the Middle East and codified torture into U.S. foreign policy.
Media Matters editor-at-large Parker Molloy expressed her disgust at DeGeneres chummily taking in the game with “one of history’s greatest monsters.”
“Every American president has been complicit in some evil stuff,” said Molloy. “But George W. Bush is next-level.”
Citations Needed co-host Nima Sharazi pointed to DeGeneres’ longstanding work to rehabilitate Bush’s image, including an infamously fawning interview of the former president in 2017.
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