Former FBI Director James Comey once again trashed President Trump in a 5-minute rant posted to his Substack.
Comey said pop singer Taylor Swift, who appeals to tweens and juvenile women in their 30s, helps him deal with President Trump.
This is the same guy who once ran the most premiere law enforcement agency in the US.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to my Substack. Last week’s cold turns out to have been COVID—quite a flashback. Donald Trump is still President and still humiliating America on a national stage, standing next to Vladimir Putin. It’s like a dream—a bad dream you can’t wake up from. But I don’t want to talk about that bad dream this week. I want to talk about a truly inspirational public figure named Taylor Swift.
Of course, I watched her podcast interview with the Kelsey Brothers. Of course, I watched the whole thing, although on YouTube, Patrice and I got kicked off for the last 15 minutes and finished it on her phone. But I watched it. You see, Taylor Swift and I go way back. I went to my first concert of hers 15 years ago. I’ve been to a second, and I have helped financially support the attendance of a lot of family members at others. I’m in a family Swiftie group chat. I know all her music, and I listen to it on my headphones when I cut the grass. So yes, I have a favorite of hers—although honestly, for me, it’s a tie between All Too Well, 10 Minute Version and Exile featuring Bon Iver.
Taylor Swift has grown up with my family and provided us a soundtrack, really, as we’ve grown ourselves and learned and adapted and dealt with adversity and celebration. She had songs for all of it. I suspect that’s something that millions of Americans have also experienced in their families. I think that’s because Taylor Swift produces great art, but also because she models something.
At every stage of her career, she’s shown a certain way of being that resonated with my kids and also felt right to me as a parent. She’s still doing that as a grown-up. Like a lot of you, I struggle with how to stand up to bullies without letting their meanness infect me and change me. You may have seen that the governor of California has been generating a lot of attention lately by posting on social media in a satirical way where he mocks Donald Trump and his all-caps megalomania and his absurdity. I find it very funny—hilarious even sometimes. But I’ve got to be honest, it also leaves me with a strange feeling at times, because I don’t want us to become like Trump and his followers. There are far more decent, honest, kind people in America than there are mean jerks.
Now, don’t get me wrong—we have our jerks, millions of them, you may have noticed. In particular, there’s a stunning coarseness and ugliness in the Republican Party today. It’s upsetting, but it’s also a minority of America. On the whole, we aren’t like that, and we don’t like that. I think that’s a big part of the reason so few Americans support Donald Trump when they have to see him up close, and why Republicans are so worried about what’s coming for them next year.
And to be clear, I am not an advocate for weakness. Of course, we need to stand up to jerks and defend what matters. But I think we have to try to do that without becoming like them, which is what makes me think about Taylor Swift. She’s made clear that she sees Donald Trump for what he is. And last year, she urged Americans not to make the serious mistake of electing him. Of course, we’re now living with the consequences of that mistake.
But while our elderly, makeup-covered President is posting about whether Taylor Swift is still hot and declaring that he can’t stand her, what’s she doing? Living her best life, producing great music, and—as she urged all of us to do during the podcast—not giving the jerks power over her mind.
She said something about dealing with internet trolls that stuck with me: Think of your energy as if it’s expensive. Think of it as a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it. I really enjoy reading Arthur Brooks, who writes columns about happiness in The Atlantic. I don’t know if he’s a Swiftie, but last week he wrote about research on the way that being rude or snarky actually hurts the rude person.
As he wrote: When you become less polite, the alteration in your conduct can make you less happy, more depressed, and angrier about life. I know you get that even without the research. Just watch Fox News or hang around on X, and you’ll see what he means. We can’t stop people from being jerks. What we can do is stop it from hurting us, from changing us.
At my second Taylor Swift concert in Hartford, Connecticut, 14 years ago this summer, she sang a song about this topic, asking: Why you gotta be so mean? And she spoke directly to the nasty people: I bet you got pushed around. Somebody made you cold. But the cycle ends right now, because you can’t lead me down that road.
You’ll be glad I didn’t sing that. That’s right—because down that road is unhappiness. Nobody should have that power over us.
Thank you, Taylor Swift. Keep the faith.
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