It’s creepy.
It’s very creepy.
Former president Donald Trump has shared his views on global popstar Taylor Swift, describing her as “unusually beautiful”.
He was asked about Swift, the "biggest celebrity of our times" who is currently on the European leg of her Eras Tour, for the forthcoming book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through The Looking Glass”, by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh.
Rather than commenting on Swift's achievements as an artist, Trump focused, rather predictably, her looks instead.
“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,” he said. “I think she’s very beautiful, actually - unusually beautiful!”
Putting aside the sociopathic third-person reference, that’s five “beautiful”s and one “liberal”, for anyone who’s counting.
In an excerpt released in Variety, Trump continued. “She is liberal, or is that just an act?” he asked Setoodeh during their interview. “She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.”
Three more “liberal”s. His vocabulary range is really very impressive.
Swift has broadly maintained a calculated silence over her political views, and has recently been criticised for her lack of comment over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
She had been rumored to be a Republican during the 2016 election cycle, before publicly sharing her political views for the first time when she endorsed two Democratic party candidates back in 2018 for the US mid-term elections.
“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country.”
She went on to support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020, taking aim at Trump in the wake of the George Floyd protests that same year.
“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,” she tweeted at Trump.
Swift has yet to make an endorsement for the upcoming 2024 election, and there have been reports that President Biden’s campaign is actively seeking an endorsement from Swift. This has sent the MAGA crowd on the warpath.
On 31 May, Trump was found guilty of all 34 charges of falsifying business records in connection with a payout to porn actress Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.
In other news of celebrities from the cultural world hitting out at Trump, celebrated author Stephen King has called the former president “senile” after a bizarre rant about sharks at a campaign event last weekend.
Brace yourselves, because to follow this train of thought demands a certain cerebral rewiring.
Trump discussed electric cars and boats – claiming that “they” want to make boats electric. (No further elaboration on who "they" are, or what policy he was referencing.) He went on to recall a conversation he had with a boat salesman: “What would happen if the boat sank?”
Then come the sharks.
“The (boat’s) battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there. By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately,” Trump rambled. “Do I get electrocuted… or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he did not know the answer.”
Trump said that he would “take electrocution, every single time” over hypothetically being killed by a shark.
Still with us? Good, because we’re struggling.
"This is like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink," King wrote.
It really is.
It’s worth noting that Trump has always had a strange fascination with sharks. He addressed it back in 2013, when he wrote on Twitter: “Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks - and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.”
The shark-obsessed Republican candidate for the White House, ladies and gentlemen.
“Apprentice in Wonderland” will be published on 18 June by HarperCollins.
