Social media is speaking out after the White House issued a statement in response to Taylor Swift‘s politically-tied acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards after winning Video of the Year for “You Need to Calm Down.” During her speech, Swift called for the passage of the Equality Act, which provides legal protections for LGBTQ people against discrimination at work, home, school, and other public SPACES, and which she had supported earlier this summer.
Taylor Swift calls out White House during MTV VMA acceptance speech. Find out why. pic.twitter.com/inCASam6g9
— CNN Early Start (@EarlyStart) August 27, 2019
“In this video, several points were made, so you voting for the video means that you want a world where we’re all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify,” Swift said during the speech.
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“At the end of this video there was a petition — and there still is a petition — for the Equality Act, which basically just says we all deserve equal rights under the law,” she continued, referencing the petition she had launched in June. “And I want to thank everyone who signed that petition because it now has half a million signatures, which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House.”
On Tuesday, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere addressed the speech in a statement to CNN.
“The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, the House-passed bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights,” Deere said, proving a nearly identical statement to the one the White House released in May.
After the statement was released, social media erupted in backlash.
“SHE GOT THE WHITE HOUSE SHAKING A LEGEND,” one person wrote.
“So what are the ‘poison pills’ – they said a whole lot of nothing,” another commented.
“We don’t accept this we want another response,” added a third.
Dozens more began chiming in with “Taylor for president.”
Swift, who had all but avoided politics in recent years, has begun backing Democratic-led initiatives in recent months, including the Equality Act. In an open letter to Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the singer slammed the Trump administration.
“I personally reject the President’s stance that his administration ‘supports equal treatment of all,’ but that the Equality Act, ‘in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental conscience rights,’” she wrote. “That statement implies that there is something morally wrong with being anything other than heterosexual and cisgender, which is an incredibly harmful message to send to a nation full of healthy and loving families with same-sex, nonbinary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.”
She also launched the “Support the Equality Act” petition on Change.org, which currently has nearly 523,000 signatures.
