Kellyanne Conway responds to Taylor Swift criticism by invoking pop star’s lyrics

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday dismissed Taylor Swift’s call for the White House to support the Equality Act while singing the song the pop star used to advocate for the bill.

“I actually like the new Taylor Swift song. It’s called ‘You Need To Calm Down.’ I can sing it for you, you know, where she says, ‘If you say it on the street that’s a knockout. If you put it in a tweet that’s a cop-out,'” Conway said on Fox News, invoking some of the lyrics from the song.

“I love that. That basically is Washington in a nutshell,” she added.

Swift included a link to her Change.org petition backing the Equality Act, which would extend rights to the LGBT community and passed the Democratic-led House in May, at the end of her music video for “You Need To Calm Down.”{mosads}

Accepting her MTV Video Music Award for best video of 2019 for the song on Monday, Swift tapped her wrist, suggesting she’s waiting for a White House response now that the petition has more than half a million signatures. 

“At the end of this video, there was a petition, and there still is a petition, for the Equality Act. It now has half a million signatures, which is five times the amount it would need to warrant a response from the White House,” Swift said. 

“Equality Act” was also displayed in bright yellow lights as Swift performed the song to open the awards. 

Conway said on Fox News that the president supports “equality” but that “we don’t support pieces of legislation that have poison pill in it that could harm other people.”

Conway did not expand on what “poison pills” the legislation includes.  

She added that Swift is “welcome to her opinion” but warned about celebrities getting involved in politics.

“When Hollywood and singers and all go political, it sounds in the moment like it’s very popular, and we’ve seen so many times where it backfires and it blows up,” Conway said. 

“But she’s also somebody who went up against President Trump head-to-head in the United States Senate race in Tennessee and lost handily,” Conway added, referencing Swift’s endorsement of Democratic Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen over Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican who won in 2018. 

The public endorsement was seen as Swift’s first public political statement. 

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere told CNN that the administration rejects discrimination but does not support the bill. 

“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 told the outlet. 

The Democratic-controlled House voted for the bill in May, but it has not been brought to a vote by the Republican-majority Senate.