Kellyanne Conway sings Taylor Swift song during Equality Act discussion

During an interview with FNC’s Martha MacCallum Tuesday Kellyanne Conway burst into song. MacCallum asked about her reaction to Ms. Swift’s politically motivated hit song, “You Need to Calm Down”. A media buzz was generated during the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) Monday night as Swift accepted an award for Best Music Video for that song.

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“You Need to Calm Down” is a song promoting the LGBTQ agenda. Taylor Swift took the opportunity to slam President Trump without actually saying his name during her acceptance speech. I know this because I covered the award ceremony show for NewsBusters. She promoted a petition she put up on Change.org in support of the Equality Act.

Okay. I just want to say that this is a fan-voted award. So I first want to say thank you to the fans, because in this video, several points were made. So you voting for this video means that you want a world where we are all treated equally under the law regardless of who we love or how we identify. At the end of the video there was a petition and there still is a petition for the equality act which basically says we all deserve equal rights under the law. And I want to thank everyone who signed that petition because it now has half a million signatures which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House.

At the end of that, she looked at her watch and tapped it.

Conway is a fan of the song, as it turns out, and stopped to sing a couple of lines from it, which isn’t something anyone was expecting. Appropriately, she sang a couple of lines that reference Twitter. ”If you say it on the street that’s a knockout. If you put it in a tweet that’s a cop-out”. Look, it’s lyrics by Taylor Swift. Don’t expect deep thoughts.

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The Equality Act passed in the House in May 2019 and moved to the Senate. It hasn’t been taken up and won’t be on the agenda any time soon. President Trump doesn’t have a bill to sign and it sure wouldn’t be this one if he did. This version of the bill is heavily biased against religious freedom. It amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”.

While Swift didn’t have the tenacity to say his name, she did mislead her fans on the president’s level of responsibility to take action on her online petition. She said it has over 500,000 signatures “which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House.” True, if it went through the proper channel, which is through the WhiteHouse.gov site. But it isn’t there. Her petition is on Change.org and that is a separate site for citizen activism. Bless her heart, it looks like she got confused. President Trump isn’t obligated to respond to the petition.

Fortunately, the only other slam to this administration came early in the awards ceremony and quickly passed. A Netflix show star, Alison Brie, and a Latino rapper, French Montana, bashed the Trump administration over immigration policy. Because of course, they did. The kicker was when Brie said, “what America is doing to immigrants is unconstitutional and frankly disgusting.” I had no idea she is a constitutional scholar.

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MONTANA: Everyone in music knows that the artists nominated for Best Latin Video are a global force.

BRIE: Their music is the soundtrack for the entire world. Wherever you go, every country on every continent, people are listening to it. The videos don’t get millions of views, they get billions.

MONTANA: I’m so proud to pronounce this award, because as an immigrant, I feel like we are the people who make this country. And I feel like I want to be the voice.

BRIE: What’s happening to immigrants in this country is unconstitutional and frankly disgusting.

MONTANA: And can I get a hand for that? These nominees and most of them are immigrants, too, are on top of the biggest movement in music. Check them out.

Even with the star power of the likes of Taylor Swift, the VMA ratings aren’t anything to brag about. The best MTV can say is that they held their own.

The ratings for the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards are in, and while they’re not up, they’re not down – and in a cable-cutting world, that’s a bit of a win for MTV and Viacom. According to Nielsen, total viewers and total adults were flat for the 2019 VMAs, though the show saw a 6% increase in ratings for the 25-54 demographic, helping make this the most-watched cable TV event of the year, not including sports.

On the other hand, there was a 6% dip in the 18-49 demo, although considering cable usage is down more than 30% among teens and young adults, that’s hardly surprising. Perhaps with that in mind, MTV is clearly making overtures to the changing age demographics of cable: host Sebastian Maniscalco appeals to an older demo, and the finale clearly catered to viewers nostalgic for the ’90s.

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American viewing audiences just want entertainers to shut up and sing. Let them spew forth with political opinions elsewhere.

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