President Donald Trump has not exactly earned many fans during his time in office. This week, after he publicly seemed to call for violence against demonstrators in Minneapolis who turned out in protest of the police murder of local black man George Floyd, even pop music star Taylor Swift spoke out against his belligerence. In the past, she, like many other celebrities, has kept her political opinions somewhat to herself, but this time, she directly denounced Trump as tied to racism and white supremacy and insisted that the U.S. will replace him in the upcoming elections. Within twenty minutes, her post had well over 100,000 likes.
12 a.m. Thursday: Trump RTs video saying "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."
12:53 a.m. Friday: Trump tweets "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) May 29, 2020
Swift posted:
‘After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump’
After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 29, 2020
Trump has never exactly been one to shy away from a public feud in the past, and in this instance, it would be hilariously wild if he decided that the best use of his time was whining about Taylor Swift on Twitter. Sure, the U.S. is still in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans and seems likely to linger as a potent threat until there’s some kind of COVID-19 vaccine — but that’s not stopped Trump from pursuing his political whims yet.
It took trump days to watch the video. It took him hours to call for shooting protesters. https://t.co/nCSoJY2AEs
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) May 29, 2020
In the original comments that Swift references, the president threatened to send in the military amidst the violent Minneapolis protests, and he insisted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” suggesting that he was plotting some kind of violence against the demonstrators. Twitter actually censored the comments, attaching a notice that the post violated their prohibition on glorifying violence on the platform.
When white Americans show up with semiautomatic rifles at statehouses, Donald Trump encourages them to “liberate” their cities. When Black Americans protest the shooting deaths of unarmed citizens, he calls for them to be shot in their cities.
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 29, 2020
Check out some of Twitter’s response to Swift below:
