Pop singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey is having a busy week defending herself online.
After drawing attention on Instagram earlier in the week for defending her new album cover and saying she isn’t capable of being racist because she’s “dated rappers,” Del Rey is now backpedaling after saying she doesn’t believe President Trump willfully incited the riot at the Capitol last week.
Speaking to BBC Radio 1 Monday, Del Rey (born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) said she didn’t think Trump knew what he was doing when he gave his address urging his followers to “fight much harder” to defend the “stolen” election and to “show strength” at the Capitol.
Shortly after his remarks, a large mob of Trump supporters stormed and broke into the Capitol and put a temporary halt to the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College votes. Trump later characterized his comments before the riot as “totally appropriate.”
Del Rey told the BBC she thinks Trump should be given the benefit of the doubt.
“You know, he doesn’t know that he’s inciting a riot and I believe that,” Del Rey said. She added that she thinks Trump has “delusions of grandeur.”
Del Rey also said that she thought the riot “needed to happen.”
“The madness of Trump… As bad as it was, it really needed to happen,” Del Rey said in the interview. “We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change but sociopathy and narcissism,” she said “Especially in America. It’s going to kill the world. It’s not capitalism, it’s narcissism.”
After fans and media outlets started questioning if Del Rey was secretly a Republican voter, she clapped back in her typical fashion with a series of tweets and video posted to her Instagram with the caption “get it out of your system and GFYS.”
“Just to take a moment to say that what I was describing w the bbc was that Trump is so significantly impaired that he may not know what he was doing due to his significant lack of empathy and the wider ranging problem is the issue of sociopathy and narcissism in America,” Del Rey said on Twitter Tuesday evening.
In the video she added, “I really don’t appreciate being painted as some white Republican who’s always been given everything and supports the incite of the Capitol riot. I grew up struggling, working my ass off, we had nothing, period. I personally don’t get it. I just think sometimes because of the way I look, it’s easy to paint this picture, but man, did I struggle to become the genuine singer-songwriter I am,” she said.
“This is my story, I’m telling it…I’m the wrong person to come for when it comes to not being inclusive or liberal,” she added. “Not that I ever focused on either one. I always just focused on the music, but if people want to make it political, I’m down, but listen to the entirety of the 40-minute interview. So…I don’t want to have to focus on this, but it is what it is. I’d love to get the point one day where we just talk about the music, but until that day, I want you to know my story.”