Madonna unloaded her thoughts about the presidential election, Donald Trump, ageism and her personal life in an interview with actress Elizabeth Banks for Billboard magazine published Monday.
The 58-year-old pop icon said it felt like “someone died” after Trump defeated her preferred presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in November.
“It felt like a combination of the heartbreak and betrayal you feel when someone you love more than anything leaves you, and also a death,” the singer told Billboard. “I feel that way every morning; I wake up and say, ‘Oh, wait, Donald Trump is still the president,’ and it wasn’t a bad dream that I had.”
“It feels like women betrayed us. The percentage of women who voted for Trump was insanely high,” she added, joining others who have criticized other women for voting for Trump, including actress Lena Dunham.
Madonna’s interview with Banks occurred just before her raunchy charity fundraiser in Miami, Florida but nearly a month after the presidential election.
“Women hate women. Women’s nature is not to support other women. It’s really sad,” the “Material Girl” said.
Madonna’s support for Clinton was no secret. The singer had promised to perform oral sex on anyone who had voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. Just days before Election Day, Madonna implored her 8.3 million Instagram followers to “vote Clinton or we are all F*CKED.”
She believes women failed to vote for Hillary out of “jealousy” and “some sort of tribal inability to accept that one of their kind could lead a nation.”
“Other people just didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t like either candidate, or they didn’t think Trump had a chance in the world,” Madonna said. “They took their hands off the wheel and then the car crashed.”
The election results left Madonna “devastated, surprised, in shock,” she said, adding: “I haven’t really had a good night’s sleep since he has been elected. We’re f*cked.”
The singer said she met Trump 20 years ago during a photo shoot at the President-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He’s a very friendly guy, charismatic in that boastful, macho, alpha-male way,” Madonna said of meeting Trump. “I found his political incorrectness amusing. Of course, I didn’t know he was going to be running for president 20 years later.”
However, she still doesn’t think people like Trump should be “heads of state.”
“I just can’t put him and Barack Obama in the same sentence, same room, same job description,” she said. “We’re the laughing stock of the universe right now. We can no longer criticize other governments, other leaders. I’m hanging my head in shame.”
Elsewhere in the the lengthy interview, Madonna railed against agism in the entertainment industry.
‘Relevance’ is a catchphrase that people throw out because we live in a world full of discrimination. Age is only brought up with regard to women,” she said. “It’s connected to sexism, chauvinism and misogyny. When Leonardo [DiCaprio] is 60 years old, no one is going to talk about his relevance. Am I relevant as a female in this society that hates women? Well, to people who are educated and are not chauvinists or misogynists, yes.”
Read Madonna’s full Billboard interview here.
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