Like George Clooney, pop diva Madonna had interacted with Donald Trump many years before he became president. As she pointed out in an interview with Billboard, she first met him while doing a photo shoot at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “I found his political incorrectness amusing,” she recalled. “Of course, I didn’t know he was going to be running for president 20 years later.” During that same interview, she also shared her grim reaction to Trump’s election as president. “It felt like someone died,” she said, succinctly adding, “We’re f***ed.”
A few months later, Madonna was one of the keynote speakers at the 2017 Women’s March in support of preserving women’s rights, taking place on the day after Trump’s inauguration. Madonna’s speech whipped up controversy when she declared, “Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Most criticism of that sentence, however, didn’t include the words that immediately followed: “But I know that this won’t change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet W. H. Auden wrote on the eve of World War II, ‘We must love one another or die.'”
Interviewed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump weighed in on Madonna’s remarks. “Honestly, she’s disgusting,” he sniped. “I thought what she said was disgraceful to our country.”
