Pop star Taylor Swift took a swing at President Trump, accusing him of “gaslighting the American public” and attempting to run an “autocracy.”
The 29-year-old discussed her political awakening on Friday, telling the Guardian that she felt the need to get involved when “all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked.” She went on to accuse the president of “gaslighting the American public into being like, ‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’”
“We’re a democracy — at least, we’re supposed to be — where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate,” she said. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”
Swift explained that she laid low during the 2016 presidential election, as she was helping her mother through a cancer relapse and dealing with a public fallout with rapper Kanye West and his reality TV star wife Kim Kardashian West.
“I was just trying to protect my mental health — not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote,” she said. “I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break.”
However, she confirmed that she would have otherwise publicly endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, reiterating her previous concern that her endorsement may have only been a “hindrance” for the candidate. The singer went on to promise to “do everything I can for 2020.”
Swift’s doubling down on her political stances comes after she took heat from fellow musician Kid Rock, who claimed Swift “wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies,” for saying “rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male” under the Trump administration.
