Country music superstar Kenny Chesney spoke to Bill Maher on Monday about why he personally rejects the idea of celebrities telling people who to vote for.
On talk show host Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, Chesney asked the host if he is a fan of rock star Bruce Springsteen, who, like Maher, is from New Jersey.
Maher confirmed that he is a fan of his, but appeared to regret that he immediately started thinking of Springsteen in a political context. Springsteen is one of the most outspoken liberal celebrities in recent years, to the point where he faced backlash for alienating some of his own fans and has led an anti-Trump “No Kings” tour.
“I just refuse to do it. I was very grateful when I came to your show in November that you knew I wasn’t going to talk about it,” Chesney said.
Maher noted that, like his show, he is multidimensional in that he likes to talk about different topics with different people, and that California Governor Gavin Newsom, as a presidential candidate, is someone he might talk to more specifically about political issues.
“I just never felt like it was my place,” Chesney said of speaking publicly about politics.
“It’s not always everyone’s place,” agreed Maher. “You’re right.”
As Chesney famously noted, “There’s a certain ego, I think, that lives in there and a certain box inside your head and your soul that for some reason you have to check to think you can make a difference.”
Maher agreed that celebrities need to keep it in check and mocked the mentality of, ‘You can make a difference by speaking out’.”
“I think they’ve actually studied this, when celebrities speak, I think it has the opposite effect,” he argued.
“I agree,” Chesney replied. He later added, “I’ve never seen it as my place to use my stage or platform, wherever I play, to tell people how to think or vote. The way they hear it. They get that everywhere else. Every place on every device. Every network. They’re there as an escape from all that.”
Maher had initially hyped that musician Taylor Swift could “save democracy” with her endorsement in the 2024 election, but following the defeat of former Vice President Kamala Harris, he has become a critic of celebrity political rhetoric, describing it as counterproductive.
During an interview with John Mellencamp in February, Maher noted, “The Democrats, I mean—for people who didn’t see it—the point of it was, you’ve got to cut your celebrities loose. You think they’re helping, and they’re actually hurting because people don’t see celebrities in any way that they can relate to their lives in any way, and they can.”
“The other funny thing is, you know, most people, you know… We don’t know anything. You know, we don’t know s…,” Mellencamp said. “We don’t know what’s really going on. We don’t know, you know, and it’s always been that way ever since I can remember.”
