Taylor Swift Explains Why She Didn’t Endorse Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election

Taylor Swift talked to Vogue for its September issue about how Kim Kardashian’s Snapchat takedown of her in 2016—and the subsequent decision by the internet to "cancel" her—changed her life fundamentally in the months after. And she also finally addressed one of the public's biggest grievances with her: her controversial decision not to endorse any candidate in the 2016 election.

Swift, who is now vocally not a fan of President Donald Trump’s, said she felt like she couldn’t publicly support Hillary Clinton because she was afraid it’d do more harm than good.

“Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement," she said, without dropping Trump's name explicitly. "He 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."

Swift also thought about the parallels between her and Clinton's public images, since her endorsement would have been in the aftermath of that Snapchat scandal when people weren't too impressed with her. "You know, 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. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary," Swift said. "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. Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So I disappeared. In many senses.”