There's a long list of celebrities that I desperately want to like me and not end up on their bad side. Probably somewhere near the top of that list is Rihanna — the singer, fashion icon, and beauty mogul is the perfect mix of cool and intimidating that makes me terribly afraid.
Luckily, she's never set her clapback sights on me, but she did just fire at a new target: President Donald Trump.
When asked how she felt after the back-to-back shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Rihanna replied, "“It is devastating. People are being murdered by war weapons that they legally purchase. This is just not normal. That should never, ever be normal."
As Vogue states, "Trump called the El Paso shooting 'an act of cowardice' and said both were the result of a 'mental illness problem.' Rihanna responded, 'Um . . . Donald, you spelled terrorism wrong!'"
"It’s a slap in the face. It’s completely racist," she continued. "Put an Arab man with that same weapon in that same Walmart and there is no way that Trump would sit there and address it publicly as a mental health problem."
However, Rihanna doesn't feel like the political situation is totally hopeless. Later on in the interview, she said, "I feel like the darkness has actually forced people to find this light within them where they want to do better."
"When everything is flowers and butterflies and you’re in your own bubble and your own world. But to see it, to know it’s happening—it pushes you to want to be the light in the world."
That's something we can all get behind.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people," she added, and continued on in a way that some people have interpreted as shade towards Jennifer Lopez, who was recently announced as the Halftime performer.
"I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”
After encouraging her followers to vote in the midterms in November, someone commented on her Instagram to ask, "Are you even a US citizen? Honest curiosity."
"Nah I’m an immigrant tryna get yo country together. Did u vote?” She wrote.
“What do you say? What can you say? It’s gonna get better? I almost feel sick to my stomach. I don’t even believe this is happening in real life."
“When I see something happen to any woman, a woman of any minority, kids, black men being murdered in the streets—I can’t remove myself from that.”
