Matthew McConaughey is usually as “cool as a cucumber,” but there are a couple of things that can get him fired up, and one of those things is politics.
The movie star stopped by The View to promote his new children’s book Just Because, which apparently came to him while he was asleep and dreaming:
“I do dream in rhythm and in music thankfully. It’s not always great music but this one happened to be what I thought was good music and it woke me up in the middle of the night.”
Such a Matthew McConaughey thing to say…
It seems like the book will be another successful endeavor for the Texas native, who already has a best seller under his belt with Greenlights. If you didn’t ever read that one, I would highly suggest you to track it down and do so.
But getting back to Just Because, Matthew initially thought that the idea that came to him in his sleep was a “Bob Dylan diddy.” He kept exploring it, and ran it by his kids, and McConaughey finally figured out that it would work best as a children’s book.
The book itself talks about parenthood and raising kids, which McConaughey is currently experiencing in his very own life. And while he is also raising a family, he is also thinking about everyone else’s, which is why he has put so much work into the Greenlights Grant Initiative.
Named after his successful book, the initiative aims to stop the threat of gun violence in schools and helps schools with the grant writing process. McConaughey explains that there is money that is allocated by the government for schools to use to help with gun violence prevention, but the process to be granted that money is intimidating and extensive.
The audience attending the live taping of The View applauds Matthew’s efforts to help stop gun violence in school, and then naturally, politics are brought to the table.
One of the hosts brings up that McConaughey generally appeals to both sides of the aisle and asked if he still would consider holding political office at some point after he formerly (and briefly) considered running for the Governor of Texas:
“If it’s where I deem myself most useful, yes. Right now, I want to be most useful as a father…
You’ve got 18 years to change the world, if you say your kids will be gone by 18. What more important job or privilege could we have?”
Matthew then shares a nice moment with Whoopi Goldberg about how kids somehow don’t just stay for 18 years, but then things get thrown off the rails.
Co-host Joy Behar kind of comes out of left-field, cuts off McConaughey mid-sentence, and asks him:
“You think you could get elected in Texas being anti-gun?”
McConaughey, who is a gun owner himself, seems to be taken back a bit as he repeats the question and the studio seems to go silent. He gathers himself and then responds with a stern look on his face:
“One thing about me and politics is, to give you a direct statement right there would be playing a game that I’m not interested in playing.
To give you a direct statement right there…”
DAMN…
Matthew even puts his finger up in Behar’s face (very close I might add) when he repeats the “direct statement” line, and the longtime host of The View clearly looks angered by the way McConaughey handled her question.
The video cuts to him afterwards with a resting off face that screams “I can’t believe she just asked me that.”
Of course, she seems to be fishing for a tasty quote, and McConaughey saw it coming a mile away… and he looked PISSED. McConaughey being a native of Uvalde, Texas, the location of one of the most deadly school shootings in American history, has advocated for “gun responsibility, not gun control,” and has called for a nuanced conversation around a complicated subject.
He’s also challenged people to get “aggressively centric,” and find ways to meet in the middle… quite the opposite of Joy Behar.
He only perks up when Whoopi awkwardly transitions the show into the break by letting everyone in the audience know that they are going home with a copy of his book.
The standoff between McConaughey and Joy Behar happens around the 10 minute mark in the video linked below:
