Trump’s New Comments on Taylor Swift Will Gross You Out

Donald Trump has finally unveiled his urgent political take on the mega-popular singer Taylor Swift, who has been relentlessly attacked by his right-wing cronies: He thinks she’s good-looking. 

In the soon-to-be released book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, the presumptive Republican nominee gushed over the very same superstar that far-right MAGA cronies once tried to cut down.

“She’s got a great star quality,” said Trump. “She really does.” The former president then pivoted to discuss the most important quality about any woman, her physical appearance.

“I think she’s beautiful—very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually—unusually beautiful,” he told Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s co–editor in chief and the author of the book. 

Caught up by his strange string of shallow, sexist compliments, Trump had the gall to suggest Swift might secretly be an undercover Republican. Quite the change from the government psyop Fox News once suggested she was. 

“But she is liberal, or is that just an act?” Trump asked Setoodeh. “She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.”

Swift has not produced a country album since 2012.

The former president was also asked about Swift’s chart-topping music. “Don’t know it well,” Trump replied, which should tell you everything you need to know.  

Trump’s objectifying response gets even creepier when taken in the context of his noted affinity for blonde women, who consistently populate his inner circle. Trump’s attempt at flattery is likely an effort to neutralize the vitriol of his far-right Republican fanboys so as not to alienate the many, many Americans who love Taylor Swift. 

But no matter how “beautiful” Trump may find her, it won’t change that in 2020, Swift backed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and joined in the chorus of those who publicly shamed Trump for spewing violent rhetoric at Black Lives Matter protesters. Swift has yet to issue some election-altering, generation-defining creed about who her fans should support in November. But fans and foes alike know all too well who’d she’d back. 

In a move that increases the temperature of his rhetoric considerably, Donald Trump called rioters under prosecution for participating in the violent January 6 Capitol insurrection on his behalf “warriors.” The comment came during a sweltering hot campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday.

“Those J6 warriors—they were warriors. But they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said while decrying prosecution of the rioters. “All they were doing was protesting a rigged election,” he added, reaffirming the Big Lie he pushed in the lead-up to the certification of Biden’s presidency in 2021.

Trump also alleged that the whole insurrection was a setup by law enforcement, who directed the rioters to storm the Capitol.

Trump has previously described Capitol rioters facing prosecution and riding out federal jail time as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” seemingly endorsing vandalism and violent assaults on cops from his base of conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists.

His comments Sunday represent an escalation in Trump’s rhetoric in defense of the rioters and comes amid his efforts to stir his base into similar violence following his felony conviction. Last Monday, Trump speculated there would be a “breaking point” for the American public if he faced jail time, with his followers eagerly calling for extreme violence in response to his conviction.

A growing number of Democrats are vowing to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month, due to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.

In March, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a speech criticizing Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and calling for new elections in Israel. Only a short time later, though, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress.

The decision has led to a serious blowback from the rest of the party, even from Democrats who haven’t been vocal critics of Israel’s war, which has killed over 37,000 people, including at least 15,000 children. On Friday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that it was “wrong” to invite Netanyahu and that she would “absolutely not” have invited him if she were still leading the chamber.

Other Democrats echoed Pelosi.

“I won’t attend and turn my back towards him,” Representative Hank Johnson said. “So I’m just gonna stay away.”

“I’m not planning on attending, and/or I’ll be participating in whatever events there are to express that we want this war to end and we want both him and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire,” said Representative Greg Casar.

Opposition is even coming from Jewish members of Congress, such as Representative Jan Schakowsky.

“The role that the prime minister is playing is very negative, and I don’t want to be there,” Schakowsky said. 

It’s not the first time Democrats have taken issue with Netanyahu speaking before Congress. In 2015, Netanyahu spoke before Congress in an attempt to sink then-President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, drawing the ire of many Democrats. At least 50 House members and eight senators chose to boycott that speech.

“He imported a little bit of controversy the last time he was here,” Representative Stephen F. Lynch said. “I thought it was disrespectful to the president, so I’m inclined not to attend.”

Increased opposition to Netanyahu’s appearance is also coming from progressives, many of whom have already called for a cease-fire.

“I’ve spoken to several members in the House and the Senate, actually, who had gone to the last speech, the last time he was here, even though they had a lot of misgivings about it, and have been clear that they’re not planning to go this time,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who won’t be attending.

As the war draws on with more and more Palestinian civilians being killed, House and Senate leadership need to realize that inviting a prime minister accused of war crimes is not the answer, but ending weapons shipments to Israel to force an immediate cease-fire is. 

Panelists at The New Republic’s Right to Read celebration in Miami Saturday evening seemed united in their diagnosis of the state of intellectual freedom in the United States: Censorship of books in schools across the country is exceedingly unpopular but nonetheless represents a grave threat to free expression.

“There are so many more of us,” said New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult. “We just have to be a little bit louder.”

The celebration, held in the cradle of the latest wave of American censorship, lifted up the voices of activists, writers, and educators, whom AFT secretary treasurer Fedrick Ingram called “first responders” and the “vanguard” of the fight against book bans.

“Public school teachers and librarians saved my life,” said 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones.

If teachers are the vanguard of the movement challenging these prohibitions, writers like Picoult and celebrated Florida-based novelist Lauren Groff, along with panelists Jacqueline Woodson, George M. Johnson, and Ellen Hopkins, represent a powerful rear guard against the sanitization of historical education in schools. As TNR’s Alex Shephard pointed out while interviewing Picoult, book bans are about nothing less than the question of American identity itself.

The author Ashley Hope Perez reminded the audience that the real problem isn’t discussing our country’s ugly past but rather that past itself. “The thing that we should be upset about is not people talking about painful histories and ugly aspects of our past; it should be that we allowed those things to happen, that those were the experiences of generations of young people,” Perez said.

And Picoult, against the conservative canard that interrogating the country’s darkest moments “divides” us, highlighted books’ unifying capability. “Books have always bridged gaps between people,” she insisted. “Book bans are meant to create them.”

The threat of what PEN American Florida director Katie Blankenship called “educational gag orders,” designed to clamp down on books discussing race, gender, and sexuality in classrooms, extends beyond the classroom.

Groff, explaining her decision to open a bookstore selling banned books in Florida, was more emphatic: “In the places where people burn books, they will one day burn people.” Indeed, the bans are of a piece with a broad right-wing agenda that seeks to restrict civil liberties across the board.

Ingram identified book bans as part of a wider war on public schooling and low-income families. Groff connected them to the rollback of reproductive rights in red states since the Dobbs decision. “People in Florida do not have control over our own autonomy in Florida right now,” she said. “This is happening under the cloak of a lot of the book banning stuff.”

Book bans, like abortion bans and the gutting of the social service net, are unpopular, the repressive last gasps of a minority that has given up on persuasion. According to Picoult, 11 people are responsible for more than half of the country’s book bans. (In Martin County, Florida, a single disgruntled parent was behind the banning of 92 books, 20 of which were written by Picoult.)

But a nascent parental rights movement that enjoys the backing of red-state governors threatens the freedoms of millions of Americans unequipped to engage it. Ingram captured it, and the strategy to oppose book bans, succinctly: “It’s about power.”

During an appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher, Senator John Fetterman credited his near-fatal stroke with making him a conservative darling, describing it as “freeing.”

“There’s a line from the first Batman, Joker, he’s like, ‘I’ve already been dead once already. It’s very liberating,’” Fetterman told Maher on Friday. “That’s not reckless, that’s just freeing. It’s just freeing in a way. And I just think after beating all of that, I just really want to be able to say the things that I have to really believe in and not be afraid of if there’s any kind of blowback.”

Following the October 7 Hamas attack, Fetterman broke from the progressives who got him elected to saber-rattle for Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza. His stance has largely been antagonistic, trolling protesters rallying for a cease-fire by waving an Israel flag over them, laughing at military veterans getting arrested protesting for a cease-fire, and castigating the United States for abstaining from a cease-fire resolution instead of voting against it. He has described student encampment protests as “pup tents for Hamas” and spread debunked propaganda denigrating pro-Palestine demonstrations in Philadelphia.

Since adopting an aggressively pro-Israel stance, Fetterman has also backed harsher border policies—a curious stance given that he used to point to his wife’s undocumented status as a child to tout his progressive bona fides.

Fetterman frames his seismic shift as stances he’s always had, which his brain damage simply allowed him the freedom to embrace—despite constantly describing himself as a progressive through the years, seeking endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, and himself endorsing progressive candidates for office.

While progressives who campaigned hard for Fetterman feel betrayed by his shift, conservatives have celebrated Fetterman’s self-described brain damage–induced embrace of right-wing positions—itself a clear signal he’s garnering the wrong audience.

“It’s heartwarming to see regular people using their brain,” said one account on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a white nationalist disinformation account boosting Fetterman’s interview with Maher.

“If only there was some way we could repeat this experiment with other elected officials,” replied another user in response to a Fox News post about how Fetterman’s brain damage “freed” him.