Unlike many in the Hollywood limelight, 29-year-old megastar Taylor Swift has — for the most part — remained silent on the subject of politics. But that all changed Friday after it was revealed in an interview with The Guardian how she really felt about President Donald Trump.
According to The Hill , Swift said she thinks he’s “gaslighting the American public into being like, ‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’”
And she didn’t stop there. Swift doubled down on her Trump attack, accusing the president of being an autocrat and implying that America’s system of government — Democracy — has gone to the wayside.
“We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy,” Swift said.
Last year, Swift grabbed national headlines after she broke her silence in the political realm by publicly endorsing former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen — a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate. Bredesen lost to then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
Earlier in August, Swift also explained her unwillingness to endorse Trump or then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, blaming both Trump and period of public turbulence for her lack of lending a little celebrity horsepower to Clinton’s campaign.
According to The Hill , in an interview with Vogue , Swift said, “Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement. He was going around saying, ‘I’m a man of the people. I’m for you. I care about you.”
Taylor Swift: Trump is “gaslighting the American public” https://t.co/Gnv0QozXC9 pic.twitter.com/X8NSbuFAI6
— The Hill (@thehill) August 24, 2019
“I just knew I wasn’t going to help,” she explained.
She also pointed to her mother’s battle with a cancer relapse and a very public verbal battle with Kim Kardashian as two reasons that prevented her from feeling as though she could be helpful to Clinton’s presidential ambitions, according to HuffPost .
“I was just trying to protect my mental health ? not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote,” Swift said. “I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break.”
Earlier this year in an essay for Elle , Swift admitted that she wanted to do more for the 2020 presidential election, as reported by The Hill .
At least one of Swift’s recent songs delivered a political message. According to The Hill , in a video for her song “You Need To Calm Down,” which was packed with some of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces such as Ryan Reynolds, Ellen DeGeneres and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Swift pushed a pro-LGBTQ message.
Toward the end of the music video, one of the graphics asks viewers to sign a petition for the Equality Act . The bill, which was passed by the Democrat-controlled House in May, would preserve protections against discrimination for the LGBTQ community.
Swift explained that she came to the realization that she could have a positive impact on a the community even though she wasn’t directly a part of it, when asked why she decided to push the pro-LGBTQ message in her music video.
