Entertainment

Rihanna calls Trump the ‘most mentally ill human being in America’

Published

5 years ago

October 10, 2019

Rihanna is slamming President Trump’s response to recent mass shootings that he blamed on a “mental illness problem,” calling the commander in chief the “most mentally ill human being in America.”

“It is devastating,” Rihanna said in a wide-ranging interview for the November issue of Vogue published Wednesday, when asked about a pair of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that claimed the lives of 32 people in August.“People are being murdered by war weapons that they legally purchase. This is just not normal. That should never, ever be normal,” the “Love on the Brain” singer told the fashion magazine.

Following the El Paso shooting, Trump tweeted that the “hateful” attack was “an act of cowardice.”

Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2019

In remarks after the shootings, Trump said: “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger – not the gun.”

The suspected El Paso shooter who opened fire at a Walmart allegedly wrote a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto that was published just before the attack that warned of a Latino “invasion.”

“And the fact that it’s classified as something different because of the color of their skin? It’s a slap in the face. It’s completely racist,” Rihanna told Vogue.

“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,” the 31-year-old Barbados-born performer added. “The most mentally ill human being in America right now seems to be the president.”

The Grammy Award winner also confirmed that she had turned down an offer to headline the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show in support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler,” she said of the NFL’s halftime show offer.

Kaepernick was the first NFL player to protest racial inequality and police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem before games.

“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,” Rihanna said.

Rihanna also suggested that the current political climate has “forced people to find this light within them where they want to do better.”

“It’s easy when you think everything is going really well and perfect. When everything is flowers and butterflies and you’re in your own bubble and your own world,” she said. “But to see it, to know it’s happening – it pushes you to want to be the light in the world.”