Former “Dancing With The Stars” champion and radio host Bobby Bones dismissed Hilaria Baldwin’s claim that she was bullied off the show despite also calling the show’s fans the “meanest fanbase of anything ever.”
“I got bullied like crazy, but people like me, so I won the show. So that’s bullcrap,” Bones said Monday on TikTok about Baldwin’s claim.
Baldwin, the wife of actor Alec Baldwin, was the third celebrity eliminated on Season 34 of “Dancing With The Stars.”
There was already controversy surrounding Baldwin’s participation in the competition because she had competed as a ballroom dancer in her early 20s. But during an Instagram Live on Sunday, the former yoga instructor said she was “bullied off the show.”
Bones, who competed with pro dancer Sharna Burgess during the 27th season of “Dancing With The Stars” in 2018, rejected that notion.
“No, no, no, you didn’t get bullied off the show,” Bones said in his TikTok. “I don’t know her. But you got eliminated because people didn’t like you.”
Baldwin, who in the past has been accused of cultural appropriation and misrepresenting where she was raised, said Saturday that there was “very coordinated strategic bullying” aimed at her while she was on “Dancing With The Stars.”
She also said on the show’s official podcast, which was recorded after her Tuesday elimination, that there was a “big problem online right now.”
“We don’t see each other,” she said. “We make enemies out of each other. And I’m talking about my fellow women. Women’s inhumanity to women. We need to stop. We will never get anywhere.”
Bones, too, has been vocal in the past about the criticism he received from “Dancing With The Stars” fans. In his TikTok, he called the show’s fanbase the “meanest fanbase of anything ever.”
“As someone who was treated like crap by the hardcore fans of the show, yeah, bullying happens, but you don’t get bullied off the show,” Bones said in his TikTok video. “You get kicked off the show because nobody voted for you.”
Despite the online criticism and receiving consistently low scores from the judges throughout the season, Bones actually won “Dancing With The Stars” in 2018, leaving some fans outraged, including actor Neil Patrick Harris, who wrote on social media the night of the finale, “Dancing With the Stars just confirmed why I don’t watch Dancing With the Stars.”
Most recently, Julianne Hough, who was once a pro on the show and now co-hosts it, said last year that the winner she most disagreed with was Bones.
After Bones’ controversial win, “Dancing With The Stars” judge Carrie Ann Inaba told Entertainment Tonight that the judges would focus more on judging dance moves and technical talent. The show also temporarily added a twist in which judges could save a couple in the bottom two, ultimately leaving it up to the judges to decide who goes home.
Burgess said during the two weeks after her win with Bones, she cried because of the hate she got online.
“It makes me emotional thinking about it now,” Burgess said on “The Joe Vulpis Podcast” in 2024. “And for a long time after that, I wished I didn’t win because of the hate that I was getting and because people were saying that we ruined the show.”