Madonna is still reeling over Donald Trump’s election.
The singer spoke with Billboard about the 2016 election results for the publication’s annual Women in Music issue. Madonna took a trip down memory lane, to a day 20 years ago, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, with Donatella Versace and Kentucky Fried Chicken ― a day when his political incorrectness seemed “amusing.”
“I wouldn’t call him a friend or anything, but I’ve certainly met him,” she said. “I did a photo shoot years ago at [Trump’s] Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach [Florida] for a Versace campaign. He’s a very friendly guy, charismatic in that boastful, macho, alpha-male way. I found his political incorrectness amusing. Of course, I didn’t know he was going to be running for president 20 years later. People like that exist in the world, I’m OK with it. They just can’t be heads of state. I just can’t put him and Barack Obama in the same sentence, same room, same job description.”
The time between Nov. 8 to present day all feels like a nightmare, she said.
“It felt like someone died. 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,” Madonna said about the election. “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.”
Madonna held a surprise concert for Hillary Clinton in New York City in November, where she asked people to vote with their hearts and souls. She attributes Trump’s win to his bank account.
“That they would rather have a successful businessman running the country than a woman who lies,” she told Billboard. “Just absurd ... In a way, it makes sense that Donald Trump is the president. Because money rules. Not intelligence, not experience, not a moral compass, not the ability to make wise decisions, not the ability to think of the future of the human race.”
Read the full interview over at Billboard.