When Donald Trump was asked about pop star Taylor Swift

Emily Bloch, Tribune News Service

Donald Trump has thoughts on Taylor Swift — but they’re not about her sold-out international tour or business savvy. They’re about her being very hot. In an upcoming book by entertainment journalist and Variety editor Ramin Setoodeh, Trump opined about Swift, calling her “unusually beautiful” and questioning if her personal political views were “an act.”

“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,” Trump said. “I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!”

What else did Trump say about Taylor Swift? Setoodeh’s book, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, is an oral history of Trump’s TV star era, chronicling the long-running reality series in a mix of interviews with Trump himself, Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, Eric Trump, and contestants.

According to Setoodeh, his conversation with Trump about Swift took place in November 2023, when Swift’s Eras Tour was making international stops and her budding relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was unfolding under the public eye.

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

Setoodeh told the former president that Swift had been making pop music for years. “He doesn’t seem aware of this,” Setoodeh wrote.

Setoodeh went on to call Trump effusive in his praise of Swift’s appearance, saying Trump used the phrase “beautiful,” several times. It’s an adjective Trump has historically used to describe women in his orbit — for better or worse.

Critics have long called out Trump’s misogynistic past and how he talks about women.

As for Swift, the artist has a history for calling out sexism in music industry and beyond. In 2017, jurors awarded her $1 in damages — a symbolic dollar — after she sued a radio host for groping her at fan meet-and-greet. Her attorneys said the case was meant to be an “example to other women.” Last week, Swift commented on a video posted by Lady Gaga, defending her against comments about her appearance and pregnancy rumors. “Can we all agree that it’s invasive & irresponsible to comment on a woman’s body,” Swift wrote. “Gaga doesn’t owe anyone an explanation & neither does any woman.”

For the first half of her career, Swift was quiet about her political stances, commenting that she didn’t think it was appropriate for a singer to weigh in. That changed in 2018, when she publicly endorsed two Tennessee Democratic candidates for House of Representatives seats. “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.”

Swift discussed this change of heart more in her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana.”

“Back in the (2016) presidential election, I was in such a horrendous place that I wasn’t going to pop my head out,” she said in the film. “These aren’t your dad’s celebrities and these aren’t your dad’s Republicans. I need to be on the right side of history.”

Swift endorsed now-President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2020 run for the White House and criticized Trump’s term. “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 not made a public endorsement for the upcoming 2024 election. A New York Times report said Biden aides see Swift as a key endorsement in his re-election bid. Trump has spoken about Swift before, too It’s not the first time Trump has mentioned Swift either. The book is scheduled to come out June 18.