Marsha Blackburn Fires Back at Taylor Swift’s Ignorant Comments

This week, we reported that singer Taylor Swift had blasted Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and urged her fans to vote for her Democratic opponent. Now, Blackburn is firing back at Swift to let her know that she picked the wrong lawmaker to mess with.

It all started on Sunday when Swift took to Instagram to claim that Blackburn “voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape.”

Swift doubled down on this on Tuesday night during her acceptance speech at the American Music Awards.

“Every award was voted on by the people,” Swift said, according to AOL. “You know what else gets voted on by the people? The midterm elections on November 6. Get out and vote!”

The Tennessee politician, however, was not having any of it.

“Of course I support women and I want violence to end against women,” Blackburn said, according to Fox News. “I’ve been very active in abuse shelters and child advocacy centers. I’ve been advocating for women in equal pay since I was 19 years old and making certain that woman have the opportunity for maximum pay and have a good record on that.”

And Blackburn didn’t stop there.

“We’re getting ready the Music Modernization Act that I helped steer through Congress. It’s going to be signed on Thursday by the president. I’ve been very active in that and Taylor Swift will benefit by that,” she explained. This bill is meant to help singer songwriters like Swift in that it will give them more royalties. In today’s age of streaming music, singers and songwriters like Swift have been complaining that it is harder for them to make as much money for their work, and Blackburn is one lawmaker who is working hard for them to change that.

Though Swift seems to be confident that she’s done enough to take down the Republican, Blackburn made it clear that she’s not worried about this at all:

“Tennesseans are more interested in the fact that Marsha Blackburn is endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by the Fraternal Order of Police, by the Police Benevolent Association and by the National Rifle Association, where I have an ‘A’ rating and their endorsement.”

Though Democrats are touting the fact that voter registration went up in Tennessee after Swift’s post went up, it’s likely that Blackburn still has very little reason to worry. While Swift may have convinced some brainless kids to register to vote, getting them to actually get up and do it is a different story. Meanwhile, the Republicans supporting Blackburn are intelligent and devoted enough to actually go to the polls on election day and vote for her.

Swift would do well to remember that she got her start in country music, and there is a lot of overlap between fans of this genre and supporters of the NRA, which firmly stand behind Blackburn. In turning on an NRA-backed candidate publicly, Swift is alienating a large portion of the original fans who got her where she is today, and this could come back to haunt her later on in her career.