Opinion
Country music legend Toby Keith died Monday night at age 62 after a long battle with stomach cancer. We then reported how Keith had previously helped kickstart Taylor Swift’s career in a big way. In the wake of Keith’s death, however, Swift remained silent and refused to publicly pay tribute to him.
Now, country music star John Rich is calling her out in a big way for it.
Rich calls Swift
Newsweek reported that Rich took to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to respond to journalist Matt Couch after he shared a 2005 video of Swift gushing over Keith after signing her to his label.
“It will be interesting to see what he says about Toby Keith,” Couch wrote. “Without Toby Keith there wouldn’t be a Taylor Swift… Toby signed her to his record label and gave her the start… I hope she recognizes that today… as she should…”
Rich responded by questioning why Swift would remain silent about the death of a man who had helped her career so much.
“When will @taylorswift13 share some words about Toby Keith? Did the man who discovered her get her first record deal? Taylor, where are you today? #TobyKeith,” Rich wrote.
The Daily Mail reported that in the video shared by Couch, a 15-year-old Swift praised Keith after he signed her to his record label, as he was a major shareholder in Big Machine Records at the time.
“You’re in the room and you can feel it. There’s a power there,” Swift said in the clip. “And you’re like, ‘oh my God.’ So I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I don’t see him and say, ‘oh my God, that’s Toby Keith.’”
Backstory: Here’s how Toby Keith helped kickstart the careers of Taylor Swift and Blake Shelton
Keith performed at Trump’s inauguration
Of course, this was years before Swift became a radical liberal who likes to constantly preach about left-wing politics to her adoring fans. Perhaps his silence on Keith’s death could be due to him defying the left to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
“I make no apologies for performing for our country or the military,” Keith said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly at the time. “I have performed at events for previous presidents [George W.] Bush and [Barack] Obama and over 200 shows in Iraq and Afghanistan for the USO.”
In 2017, Keith defended Trump after his infamous “grab them by the p****” comment, noting that “kids talk like that everywhere.”
“Bill Clinton, everyone was with him about getting a blowjob,” Keith said, according to Newsweek. “I was like, ‘It doesn’t affect how he runs the country.’
Keith received the National Medal of Arts from Trump.
Swift’s politics
By contrast, Swift has often used her platform to target Trump, and campaigned hard for Joe Biden in 2020. That year, Swift accused Trump of “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism” in response to comments which he had done by condemning the violence that spread across the country following the death of George Floyd.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the courage to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” he wrote on social media at the time, according to The Mail. “When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump.
Related: Megyn Kelly Reveals Why Taylor Swift Would Be Crazy to Support Biden – “If He’s Smart…”
Swift wouldn’t be where she is today if it weren’t for Keith, so her silence surrounding his death is nothing short of deafening. While there’s no confirmation that politics is what led Swift to keep quiet about his passing, it unfortunately wouldn’t be surprising if that were the case.
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