While defending his appearance in Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" music video, dancer and YouTube star Todrick Hall took on one of the more controversial rumors about the singer: that she voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
"[M]any people have been tweeting me, 'She supports Trump! She probably voted for Trump!'" Hall told Yahoo! in a wide-ranging interview about his friendship with Swift. "They're making this huge assumption, when Taylor has never to my knowledge come out and said anything about her being pro-Trump. But people would still rather believe that she is the one who is pushing Trump's agenda."
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View StoryChallenging internet memes that paint Swift as fake and manipulative, Hall said that she and her family have always been kind and accepting about his race and sexuality. He mentioned one occasion when he was invited to spend Thanksgiving with them.
"I've never felt like there was ever a moment that I couldn't be myself, and talk about the fact that I'm gay or whatever. At Thanksgiving, we all sat around and talked about it, and there was another one of her friends there who was African-American, and we all sat down and talked about racism and watched '13th' on Netflix and talked about how important it was. It was one of the most beautiful conversations I've ever had, because sometimes as an African-American person I feel like I can't voice my opinion about how difficult it is to be not just an African-American person in the entertainment industry, but how scary it is to be black in America, in even 2017."
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View StoryEven if Swift did start speaking out about political issues the way some people want her to, Hall said, she would still get criticism for it.
"Maybe one day, Taylor will start being super-political, and using her voice to do the things that people think that she should be doing. But even then, she will probably be ridiculed for not being vocal enough, or not being on the right side. I don't think that there is a way to win in this industry, so every person has to take their own journey at their own pace, at their own time, and do what they feel like is right. All I know is that Taylor has been nothing but sweet to me since day one, and if she asks me to do a video, I'm absolutely going be there."