Producer-singer-songwriter and boyfriend of Lena Dunham, Jack Antonoff, has fallen into a nearly ubiquitous celebrity trend: creating an echo chamber of empty political commentary.
Josh Duboff of Vanity Fair interviewed Antonoff June 15, 2017. The musician’s comments on the President and his family were particularly nasty – and, frankly, false.
Antonoff told Vanity Fair: “Walks like a racist, white supremacist, talks like a racist, white supremacist: ding, ding, ding! He’s actually even worse than a racist white supremacist …Where does he get off oppressing other people?” Antonoff accused Trump of ‘oppressing gays.’
Yet the President has openly supported the LGBTQ+ movement, considering gay marriage to be a “settled” issue. Trump has also decried white supremacy in an interview with the The New York Times in November 2016. “I disavow and condemn them,” Trump told a slew of NYT journalists, referring to white supremacist groups who vocally supported him during his candidacy.
Antonoff also remarked none-too-fondly on “those fucking Kushners.” His apparent hatred for the eldest first daughter’s family was not rooted in any particular piece of evidence.
Lena Dunham, who is dating Antonoff, also managed to bring her boyfriend’s music back to politics. When speaking with Duboff on Antonoff’s songs, Dunham said, “It’s funny, because I never know what [each song] is about, and I’m usually wrong. I’ll be like, ‘Is this one about me?’ And he’ll be like, ‘No. This is about life in the Trump administration … I truly never know what’s about me, what’s about his sister, what’s about his experience with politics.”
Antonoff isn’t saying anything new. Katy Perry, Tom Morello, Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep – to name just a few – have also contributed to this increasingly vacuous echo chamber.
