Lana Del Rey clarifies comments about Trump's role in Capitol riots: 'It's not the point'
After receiving pushback for stating that President Donald Trump didn't know he was "inciting a riot" at the U.S. Capitol, Lana Del Rey is clarifying that she didn't mean to defend him.
"Trump is so significantly impaired that he may not know what he was doing due to his significant lack of empathy," the singer-songwriter tweeted Tuesday, "and the wider ranging problem is the issue of sociopathy and narcissism in America."
The clarification came after she spoke about her new music and American politics on BBC Radio 1's Future Sounds in a podcast released Monday.
Video: Lana Del Rey sparked controversy among fans with album announcement
"He doesn't know that he's inciting a riot. I believe that," she said of Trump's words and actions last week. Host Annie Mac countered, "I thought that was very, very clearly obvious that he knew what he was doing the whole way."
In follow-up tweets Tuesday, Del Rey criticized magazines for "taking my well-intentioned and believe it or not liberal comments out of context."
Del Rey also posted a video further defending herself.
"When someone is so deeply deficient in empathy, they may not know that they're the bad guy," she said, referring to Trump. "Don't make the controversy that I don't think that he meant to incite a riot. It's not the point, is what I was saying."
Such "delusions of grandeur," Del Rey suggested, have fueled a rise in domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic. Studies have shown that since the start of the pandemic, there have been increases in domestic violence-related 911 calls compared to spring 2019.
In her video and her latest tweet, Del Rey also implied it was sexist for media outlets to have misrepresented her words. "I get it — I have something to say and I don't just show up, giggling and talking about my hair and my makeup," she said in the video.
"A woman still can't get mad right? Even when a mob mentality tries to *incite," she tweeted after.
During the BBC interview, Del Rey had said that "the madness of Trump, as bad as it was, it really needed to happen."
"We really needed a reflection of our world's greatest problem, which is not climate change, it's the problem of sociopathy and narcissism," she said. "Especially in America. It's going to kill the world. It's not capitalism, it's narcissism."
The hullabaloo comes just days after Del Rey caught heat for getting preemptively defensive about the women of color featured on the cover of her upcoming album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club.
"In 11 years working I have always been extremely inclusive without even trying to. My best friends are rappers my boyfriends have been rappers," she said. "My dearest friends have been from all over the place, so before you make comments again about a WOC/POC issue, I'm not the one storming the capital, I'm literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven. Respect it."
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