Another celebrity has decided to play a more active role in politics — and her colleagues haven’t hesitated to call her out on it.
Amid singer-songwriter Taylor Swift’s sudden interest in politics, fellow musician Kid Rock accused the 29-year-old of catering to Democrats only “because she wants to be in movies,” The Daily Wire reports.
“Political undertones”
Swift first made it known that she was going political in a May interview with German magazine RTL.
“I definitely think there are political undertones in the new music I made,” Swift said at the time. “I’m not planning to stop encouraging young people to vote and to try to get them to talk about what’s going on in our country. I think that’s one of the most important things I could do.”
For most of her career, Swift has avoided this very thing — which begs the question: why now? According to Swift, she felt her influence in 2016 would only hurt her cause.
“Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement,” Swift told Vogue for its upcoming September issue. “He [Donald Trump] was going around saying, ‘I’m a man of the people. I’m for you. I care about you.’ I just knew I wasn’t going to help.”
Why now?
How is now any different? For one thing, Swift says part of the reason she stayed quiet in 2016 was that she was too much like Hillary Clinton.
“The summer before that election, all people were saying was, ‘She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar,'” Swift told Vogue. “These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? ‘Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women.'”
The singer went on to say that “literally millions of people were telling me to disappear.”
“So I disappeared. In many senses,” she said.
“Oldest move in the book”
But while she has tried every excuse in the book to make up for her lack of political advocacy over the last decade — or more — of her career, other musicians, like country-rock legend Kid Rock, have suggested that Swift has a different motivation. Kid Rock tweeted Friday:
Taylor Swift wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies….period. And it looks like she will suck the door knob off Hollyweird to get there. Oldest move in the book. Good luck girl.
-Kid Rock
— Kid Rock (@KidRock) August 9, 2019
Regardless of the cause, Swift has clearly joined the faction of celebrities who use — or rather, abuse — their devoted fanbases for political gain. What a shame.
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