Kevin Costner doesn’t care what you think about his politics
Yellowstone star Kevin Costner doesn't "really care how the cookie crumbles" when it comes to his political endorsements
Aux News Kevin Costner
A cowboy like Kevin Costner has to march to the beat of his own drum, regardless of his adoring Yellowstone public. Politically, he doesn’t subscribe to any sort of “shut up and act” mentality, no matter which side of the aisle is bothered by his views. The registered Independent has endorsed all sorts of candidates, from Pete Buttigieg to Liz Cheney. And if you don’t like it, well, tough!
“I didn’t really care how the cookie crumbles, that people that liked me now don’t like me,” Costner tells USA Today about his extracurricular political activities. “That’s OK.”
If you’re not put off by Costner’s DGAF attitude and remain curious about his political motivations, here’s the explanation of his beliefs. “I vote for who I think has the best interests of the country and how we sit in the world. If someone is lying to their base, lying to the general public, then they’re not serving any purpose—other than for themselves,” the actor told The Daily Beast in a 2020 interview. “The Democratic Party doesn’t represent anything that I think, and neither does the Republican Party right now—at all.”
Probably the only person who represents what Kevin Costner thinks is Kevin Costner, but don’t expect him to enter the game himself. Unlike his television counterpart John Dutton, who was recently elected as governor of Montana, he has no aspirations for public office. “No, I don’t think there’s any reason for me to run,” he says, “though I wish the people that did run had a bigger vision and more of a morality about how they see the country evolving. I’m disappointed.”
What morality does he wish to see applied, one wonders? Costner does not elaborate, but he does offer some words on his endorsement of Cheney, who lost her primary race in Wyoming in 2022. “Just because you lose doesn’t mean you’re done; it doesn’t mean you’re even wrong,” Costner says. “I was clear that [Cheney] probably wasn’t going to win her election. But I wanted to let her know, as a citizen, how much I appreciated her brave, clear-headed stance.” If only the election hinged on Kevin Costner’s sole participation… a Swing Vote, if you will. Alas, maybe next time.
131 Comments
Good for him. And he is correct. Both parties suck.
True, but usually when people like Costner say the Democrats suck, it’s not for the reasons they actually suck.
You’re absolutely correct.For one, seeing that the OP’s history includes praising SpaceX and calling NASA an “antediluvian bureaucracy” tells me he’s probably one of those who aren’t criticizing Democrats for the right reasons.Meanwhile, all the other people in this thread who responded to him by comparing the Democrats to a messy chihuahua or to stubbing your toe are either ignorant of their real flaws or too privileged to care.
The only reason the messy chihuahua works as a comparison for the Democrats is because in that argument the GOP is compared to a pit bull who’s mauled four children. It’s all about scale. More accurately, the GOP is a pitbull who’s been on a 30-year rampage from coast to coast mauling men, women, and children of all ages while being encouraged by roughly 45 percent of the country to keep doing so, even by people who have been mauled. The Democrats in this scale/scenario would be 100,000 chihuahaus barking at the pit bull to please stop.
Give it a rest wokester
Stubbing your toe sucks.Getting cancer sucks.Saying, “stubbing your toe and getting cancer both suck” is fucking idiotic.
One of them is a black hole sucking in everything in site and crushing everything into non-functional oblivion in an orgy of destruction.Hint: It’s the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is still trying to run things for the betterment of others and well … actually not run things into the ground.
Keep telling yourself that.
You’re partly right – but the difference isn’t that one party wants to destroy everything and one party wants to help people. Both parties primarily exist to make the rich richer; the difference is that the Republicans want to make the poor poorer and hurt people in general while the Democrats want everyone to do well and help people when possible, but only as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the rich getting richer.
This is a deeply hilarious and naive take.
Asctually the democrats are trying to do the absolute bare minumum to help normal people while not pissing off their corporate overlords. Even now the democratic party leadership is far more concerned with fighting leftists in their party than fighting republicans.
We’ve got to separate the party label from the individual people. I dont know why there is no algorithm to shame folks that use party affiliation as a means of prejudice. One can disagree with Republican (or democratic) viewpoints, but to HATE someone that has a particular belief is in itself a form of bullying or maybe worse. But that will never happen. I find it hypocritical to n’th degree for groups to preach equal treatment for one group, but not all. Again, applies to all sides.
“The Democratic Party is still trying to run things for the betterment of others.”Perhaps you’d like to invest in some very obviously shady real estate, my friend? Yeah, no, the vast majority of Democrats are not interested in your wellbeing. They just don’t twirl their mustaches and cackle madly while they’re tying your basic needs up and placing them on the train tracks. Stop being suckered by a smile and some progressively-phrased sweet nothings being whispered into your ears. Republicans are vile, but at least they’re extremely obvious about it. Democrats offer their supporters the world, then lack the spine or decency to deliver any of it. It’s all half-measures and broken promises.There are some Dems who seem half-decent, sure. But they’re few and far between, or at the very least, they’re usually not the ones with the most power in the party. Dems may be the lesser evil, but politicians are still 99% evil. Evil is evil. We need to do better as a country than just waving pom-poms for The Lesser Evil.Not defending Costner, by the way. Sounds too wishy-washy for me.
The issue many people have with democrats is they want to use TAX DOLLARS to help Americans, and they want to be kind and inclusive. Trump appeals to the inner asshole in many Americans who only care about themselves and say screw you to everybody else. If voters truly cared about the country, Republicans would never get elected with their current platform of “own the libs at any cost.” They’d actually be forced to do something positive for a lot of people. But since so many Americans hate fellow Americans enough to deliberately sabotage the country just for their own selfish purposes.
“Both Parties Suck” – People who don’t recognize the danger of the GQP’s rush to fascism
-Snarling rabies-foamed pit bull who has mauled four children-15 year-old blind chihuahua who keeps pissing on the rugThe wise man: “Both are bad dogs”
Let’s try to be more accurate.Snarling rabies-foamed pit bull who has mauled four children-15 year-old blind chihuahua keeps pissing in the drinking water and slowly over time poisons 4 children.They are both garbage, and neither side gives a flying fuck about you or the rest of the little people.
bOtH sIdEsI am very smart
An evergreen clip
Just come out and say you’re going to vote DeSantis.
Oh, man, what an edgy opinion to have in our current year of 1996. Want to go knock back a couple of Zimas and listen to the latest Cranberries album?
Imagine being this fucking guy.
Yes but is it that hard to NOT vote with the nazis and klan members?
Yeah I used to think that too until I stopped listening to my “independent” thinking dad and actually read a book or two.
But one is much worse.
First semester is almost over, I guess. Good luck with finals!
Blindfolded, against a wall: Sure, this sucks, but the Dems were so unlikeable!
They both suck but one is on the verge of creating Civil War II and the other is just incompetent. I’ll take the goof offs over the neo-fascists any day.
A surprise endorsement! Each more surprising than the last
This is the perfect attitude and approach towards politics
Incoherent fence-sitting that makes low IQ people feel above it all?
The lowest IQ folks are the ones stuck on one side of the fence and never go over to the neighbors to discuss other ideas.
In my experience, people who are actually smart don’t have to call themself smarter than people they disagree with on the internet
…for an uninformed child.
The politics of Kevin’s character in Man of Steel via Zack Snyder sucked.There, I said it.
Zack Snyder didn’t write a single word of the script for Man of Steel, so maybe you mean David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, whose script he was hired by Nolan and Warner Bros. to direct?
whatever, it’s not like he doesn’t try to sneak his objectivist bullshit into literally everything he does. He doesn’t even try to sneak it, he typically walks it right in the front door, loudly banging trash can lids together.
I have stopped listening to some movie podcasts because of their tendency to attribute EVERY. FUCKING. DECISION. to the director. I like the hosts of Generation Lost but had to stop on their most recent episode about In the Bedroom because they attributed a bunch of story decisions to director Todd Field. But Field CO-WROTE the script AND it’s an adaptation of a short story from 1979.
“But Field CO-WROTE the script AND it’s an adaptation of a short story from 1979.”
Todd Field also directed it, which means that literally EVERY word uttered in the finished film is because Todd Field decided it was going to be there.
There is *NO* way to overattribute things to the director because the director has THE final say, except in very, very, very, very rare exceptions.
It’s pretty cute that you don’t know that in the movie industry the writers are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT doing what the directors ask, but you still pretended that you know how it works because for some reason you really, really NEEDED to offer up an opinion.
Every single word that is uttered in MoS, BvS and his director’s cut of JL is uttered SPECIFICALLY because Zack Snyder decided it.
I mean sure if you want to pretend to think a director has ZERO influence over anything in the script…go ahead.
Okay!
“The Democratic Party doesn’t represent anything that I think, and neither does the Republican Party *right now* …”Translation: Is a Republican.
Bingo.
that’s what I read.
My guess is he’s a Republican who doesn’t like Trump.
He also voted for Buttigieg. He strikes me as a rich guy who hates paying taxes and will vote for whoever doesn’t make him pay taxes without reminding him that they also hate minorities.
If the Republicans were just about cutting taxes and regulations and didn’t make abortion, gay rights, or racial issues their thing, every single actor would be a Republican
Krusty works out way too well for these:
Gay Pete is a minority you homophobe!
yeah. There are lots of us (ie boomers) that worked our whole lives for what we have. When all we needed to do was cry a lot until we get what we want.
“But that DeSantis feller is quite swell. He’s great with a whistle!”
That’s my guess too.
Exactly. Conservatives of yesteryear (pre-Trump) are mostly unhappy with the direction the party is going now, but will vote for them anyway. Costner clearly does not support the Trump-obsessed faction of the party, but is not willing to give up on the party despite their increasingly blatant and no longer deniable descent into fascism. Probably like the members of the Nazi party who didn’t like or approve of what they were doing but did it anyway because of populist nationalism.
He wouldn’t be supporting Buttigieg at any point if he was truly a republican. He’s most likely just your garden variety independent that both parties fight over at election time.
A white guy who tells you both parties are bad is a Republican who wishes Trump would leave Ron DeSantis alone.
Translation: Dude who doesn’t like paying taxes or the government telling him what to do, but doesn’t actively hate women, POC, or LGBTQ people, as long as he’s not being asked to do anything about it.
NIMBY Democrat at this point.
This comment was more helpful than the actual article.
Man, if only there was some kind of, I don’t know, an encyclopedia easily access on the internet, that would probably contain information. That would be pretty great, right?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Costner(Spoiler Alert: He was a friend of Regan and a Republican until 1992 when he switched sides and start to support more Democratic candidates. Aside from an occasional endorsement of a Republican since then like Liz Cheney or Phil Gramm, he’s mostly supported Democratic candidates including Obama, Buttigieg, and Biden once he became the candidate.) When he’s referring to “that people that liked me now don’t like me” he’s probably talking about how some of our conservative parents that can’t believe the actor who made their late 80’s/early 90’s movie celebrating boomer Americana is actually a left-leaning centrist.
Because he doesn’t want to pay taxes. All the other BS embarrasses him, but, oh, taxes!
So? Why do you care?
Actually a bummer if that’s how you think. “Not democrat mean is republican dur dur.” What the voting turn out this year proved is that more and more Americans can be shown to not be monolithic. Keep in mind, Democrats are not the lesser of two evils- they just make themselves seem nicer when they commit evil.
Oh, darn. I already mailed him my treatise.
He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of his staunch pro-Chthulhu stance.
No lives matter!
“If you’re not put off by Costner’s DGAF attitude ”If you ARE? Get a fucking life.
“What morality does he wish to see applied, one wonders?”
Why? WHY does one care about an actor’s privately held beliefs?
But more importantly, what does Kevin SORBO think?
Oh noes… he forgot to update his profile after he moved. Says Florida now.
Thank god I don’t live in California! proclaims man who would race out of a funeral and be on the first flight to LA if absolutely *anyone* would return his phone calls.
It has to really suck to be Kevin Sorbo. Even Tim Allen has a TV series starting on Disney+ and Last Man Standing was on the air for 10 years. Yellowstone is getting a lot of attention, and spinoffs! Outspoken conservatives are getting work. A lot of it. At some level, he has to know that the reason he isn’t is because he’s just a bad actor.
Yep. Tim Allen may be an absolute toolbag but he had a highly enjoyable standup schtick for the time and parlayed that not only into a very successful sitcom, but also into a later sitcom that, though a bit more ham-fisted in its execution, ran for a freaking decade. And on top of that he’s had some beloved roles in films like Galaxy Quest, The Santa Clause, and the Toy Story series.Kevin Sorbo just sucks, much like, say, Scott Baio. Kirk Cameron is lucky that he and his wife (whose family was also rich) have enough money to produce their own movies because he sucks, too.
Also love that his claim to fame, a short-lived show from thirty years ago, was utterly eclipsed by its own spinoff. *twists the knife*
OK.
if he truly didn’t care what people thought, then he wouldn’t endorse candidates at all.
That makes no real sense. Someone who does care what people think about them would keep their preferences as secret as possible and avoid public endorsements. Someone who doesn’t care about any fallout from making their preferences public would endorse…He’s not saying he doesn’t care about politics…
He does care what people think though because clearly people bugging him about his politics got to him.
his endorsements are an attempt to influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and votes. So he does care or why make the effort to try to sway people?
Just read what he actually said. He said he doesn’t care if someone liked him before and doesn’t like him now because of his political views. He’s not saying anything about not wanting to influence people or make his opinion known whatsoever.
Wow, what a stupid, ignorant, idiotic thing to say.
That makes no sense. He doesn’t care what people think about him and his politics. He seems to still want the candidates he backs to win, hence the endorsement.
He doesn’t care about the people who disagree with him, he does care a bit about the people who do agree with him. He just didn’t elaborate because it’s kind of common sense.
I understand why he was asked (because a character he plays is in politics) but like, if they’re not either taking part in rallies for candidates, or actively running themselves, I do not give a damn who random-ass celebrities vote for. So like, good for him I guess.
I’m just happy to see an actor who for once realizes he’s not the character he portrays. Too many seem to think they are musicians, cowboys, both, or, worse, qualified to hold public office.
I’d be very surprised if Costner didn’t think of himself as at least part cowboy.
At one point he 1000% believed he could’ve been a professional baseball player, I’m sure of it.
To be fair, do you really think he’d do a worse job running the Cleveland Browns?
Considering how much of the average populace think 1) they could govern better if given the chance and 2) have absolutely no clue how government functions in even the most basic of terms, I’d be floored if KC here didn’t think he could be a politician, he’s just got enough of a grasp that it sucks and he is already rich, so why bother?
I actually think much of the population could do better than many of our elected officials, but lack the narcissism and masochism required to put themselves through the anguish of running.
But you should see how long he can stay underwater!
OK, but what about a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter?
I believe his positions on those issues are clear.
Anti-semite.
Not sure where he stands on that today. He has been known to change his views. After all, he also said he believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and we know that opinion changed, big time.Then again, he has remained steadfast on his beliefs about the novels of Susan Sontag.So really, who can say?
How is the title of this story not “Back and to the … Middle?”
Nobody at A.V. Club has watched a movie made before 2010
Ah, Costner is one of those Both Sides Are Bad So Vote Republican types
If your endorsements are all over the political map, then that more or less means you have no cogent views and just fall for artifice.
Cool, I don’t care what Kevin Costner thinks about his politics either.
but you felt the need to comment on it, so you did care on some level. If you didn’t care, you would have just ignored it, not read the article, and moved on to something else.
The real question is… what made you think YOUR comment was interesting or worth sharing in any way
(Ice T voice): You’re tryin to tell me the star of 2008’s Swing Vote is an avowed centrist?
Does he care what people think about his acting?
I’ve always found him to be spectacularly dull but I don’t guess that bothers him.
He’s pretty good in MR. BROOKS, for what it’s worth. And I remember liking him a lot in SILVERADO when that came out and he had no baggage.
Haven’t seen Mr. Brooks, but his role in Silverado was fun – I’d like him more if he did more goofy parts like that. (His Robin Hood was goofy but wasn’t supposed to be…)
As a political party, Democrats have not devolved to a level where benevolence is considered a character flaw. Democrats do not think a rising tide should selectively raise only their boat AND drown the holy fuck out of everyone else who isn’t a Democrat. Democrats have legitimate plans for the beterment of all citizens as a whole. Republicans don’t have anything beyond more punitive belching and anger.
Democrats DO distract themselves with petty, pedantic woke issues. Democrats never miss a stupid-ass opportunity to say things like “defund the police”. Democrats never fail to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity when it comes to playing checkers versus Republicans playing chess with media manipulation and news cycles. Biden is old and Harris publicly acts like she has an easily offended, comfortably morbidly obese LGTBQ lesbian activist transgender Black immigrant librarian woman on her shoulder measuring every…fucking….thing….she says. Ready to let Harris know some liberal somewhere was just displeased with her tone and she needs to apologize before she finishes that sentence. But I’ll take those annoyances 1000 times over an anti-logic, anti-science party of paranoid rubes that sold out the very foundation of democracy just to court the votes of a White Privilege movement of neo-Confederates Southern Strategy lab rats who worship a fascist orange fraud from New York City.
Have a nice day.
Seems like a very reasonable thing to say. I’m excited to see how it enrages people.
I’d be excited if someone said something that doesn’t enrage people.
Doesnt enrage me. But when someone says “both sides suck”, it usually means theyre a republican. Dunno why, but it does.
“Dunno why, but it does.”Because they’re an embarrassed Republican, that’s why. And usually the “both sides suck” talk is an attempt to talk themselves into or give some feeble excuse to hold their nose and color in the box for the Republican.
yup thats a reason.
I love when people confuse “reasonable” and “agrees with me”.Hope my comment doesn’t enrage you.
I have a bigger problem with your name.
Where do you get the supply of butts for your soup? Or is it just the same cheeks everyday?
There’s a scene in the first season of Yellowstone in which his character comes across a dozen or so Chinese tourists who have trespassed into his ranch’s property, and he basically kicks them all out, even firing a rifle into the air to get them out ASAP. It was hilarious, and a great moment.
Kevin Costner also doesn’t care what you think about Robin Hood having an American accent, or that Waterworld and The Postman both sucked.
With a career like his, he can both afford to and has to not care a lot.
All those movies were a masterclass on great cinema!
I enjoyed both of those goofy romps.
I enjoyed The Postman mostly because it was so weirdly earnest. Waterworld felt way too self-indulgent.
He has always been somebody with extraordinarily high self-regard, so I’m not surprised he blows himself over calling himself an independent.Draft Day is the stupidest movie premise in the last 50 years. That is all.
You ain’t kidding. There is actually a team called the Cleveland Browns and the NFL does have a draft. That’s where the realism ends.
Now that I agree on. It does raise the point that it’s not sexual harassment if your subordinate loves you…..
Oooh, he thinks both parties are bad, what a deep take.
Mary. You’re a registered sexist and racist. I don’t care what you ‘think’.
I’m from Alberta and Yellowstone is like Rings of Power for right wingers
Dude’s a KGB spy. I’ll be voting against every single one of his endorsements.
Fine with me. I’ve thought he’s boring for about 30 years now.
An actor says something about not saying anything. How did this non-conversation even start and why are there 61 comments about it?jfc, we’re in a bad way
What a coincidence! I don’t care about his politics, and I don’t care that he doesn’t care if I care.