Jamie Foxx defends Ellen’s decision to attend football game with George Bush

Liberal talk show host was criticised for being friends with the former Republican president

Jamie Foxx has defended Ellen DeGeneres’s decision to attend a football game with former UK president George W Bush.

The liberal talk show host was criticised in October for sharing friendly exchanges with a Republican president, who started the Iraq War and once endorsed a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.

At the time DeGeneres, who is in a same-sex marriage with her wife Portia de Rossi, said: “Here’s the thing, I’m friends with George Bush. In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have. We’re all different and I think we’ve forgotten that that’s okay that we’re all different.”

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter if he was “okay with” the fact DeGeneres and Bush went to the game together, Foxx said: “Listen, I’ve been in football games with Jesse Jackson, George Bush, everybody. They’re still humans.”

Tom Hanks, who was at the same roundtable interview, added: “Not everybody should be political, but everybody must be principled. And we carry our principles with us 24 hours a day.

“And one of the things I learned from the get-go as an actor in a repertory company is, you didn’t have to like those people and you did not have to agree with those people, but you had to respect those people. And the default setting, I think, for so much of everything is conflict and cynicism.”