John Rich responded to Matthew McConaughey's viral photo of his swollen eye with a political statement that garnered much attention on social media.
On July 10, Oscar-winning actor McConaughey took to his accounts on Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, to share a selfie that showed one of his eyes had been swollen shut after an apparent encounter with a bee.
Captioning the image, which showed him smiling despite the injury, the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days star wrote: "Bee swell."
While the comment garnered a flood of sympathetic comments from a host of fans and celebrities including Cindy Crawford, David Beckham, Chelsea Handler and Bear Grylls, country musician Rich showed far less pity.
Taking to X, Rich shared a screenshot of McConaughey's post alongside the caption: "Now you know what the rest of us feel like after you voted for [President Joe] Biden you blithering jackass."
As of press time, the post had been viewed more than 150,000 times. Newsweek has contacted representatives of McConaughey and Rich via email for comment.
Rich is known to have used his platform to share his conservative views on a number of occasions, while also criticizing Democrat Biden, who is expected to face off against former President Donald Trump in this year's election.
Despite Rich's assertion that McConaughey voted for Biden, Newsweek found no record of the actor publicly announcing who he voted for in 2020.
Weeks after the presidential election in 2020, McConaughey sat down for an interview with British comedian Russell Brand on his Under the Skin podcast. During their conversation, McConaughey argued the case for being "aggressively centric" as a solution to the polarization that permeated politics.
McConaughey also criticized the "far left," saying: "There are a lot [of people] on that illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards that other 50 percent."
Pointing to Trump's 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, he went on: "Many people, I'm sure you saw it, in our industry, when Trump was voted in four years ago, they were in denial that it was real. Some of them were in absolute denial."
McConaughey then highlighted the right's response to Trump's loss to Biden in 2020. "It looks like Biden's our guy," the screen star said. "Now you've got the right that's in denial, because their side has fake news. And I understand, they've been fed fake news. No one knows what the hell to believe, right? So they're putting down their last bastion of defense."
The actor previously sparked speculation he was running for governor of Texas, before announcing in late 2021 that he had decided against it. He did, however, meet with Biden to discuss gun reform while publicly calling for "responsible gun ownership" following a 2022 mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.
In an interview on the Commune podcast with Jeff Krasno in July 2021, McConaughey shared that he was embracing a "centrist" platform, rather than aligning himself with the Republican or Democrat parties, as he discussed the divisive state of politics.
"We're all much more centrist than we're led to believe we are," McConaughey said at the time. "We have the numbers... We're running the ship. Now, there's a couple of militia pirate groups that are coming over on the far right and the far left and we're being told that they're the absolute boogeyman and we better be scared... Let's kick 'em off the boat. Don't let 'em board."
When asked by Krasno if he thought he was the person who could unite the American people, he said: "I don't think it's a policy that changes us. I truly believe in the capacity that each one of us individually have to be more responsible for ourselves. I understand why we don't sometimes. I understand why I don't sometimes—the sacrifices that can take."
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