I n a recent interview, the actor Vince Vaughn expressed wariness at being asked so often about his politics. “I’ll finish the political thing, because I think you’re interested,” he snarked, in response to a not particularly subtle question about gun legislation from The New York Times ’s David Marchese. Later, when Marchese asked Vaughn about more of his stances, he replied, courteously but firmly, that he gets asked far more about not believing in gun control than those who do.
“There’s a consistency with it,” he added. “It’s like that becomes a focal point.” In fairness to writers like Marchese, it’s no real surprise that politics dominate Vaughn’s newer interviews.
As Vaughn’s mainstream career has dipped, in tandem with an industry that’s lost interest in making mid-budget comedies for adults – films that were once so synonymous with him, such as Old School or Wedding Crashers – his views have become more central to his public image. Unless you were one of the handful of people to see the horror comedy Freaky or the Kristen Bell vehicle Queenpins , the last thing you may have seen Vaughn in was grainy footage of him shaking Donald Trump’s hand at a football game . (That image sparked a mini firestorm in January 2020, before everyone started violently sneezing and then some other stuff happened.
) Vaughn has since clarified that he is a libertarian (so neither allied with the Republican nor Democrat parties), but next to the ubiquitous .