At the back of our minds, we all knew that there was a possibility of Donald J. Trump winning the presidency. After all, in all of the polls, Trump had a 50% chance of winning. But that doesn’t make the results less devastating. And some of the biggest celebrities took to social media to share their disappointment.
Ariana Grande, who has not been shying away during this election period from showing her support to Kamala Harris, was one of the first people to express her sadness about Trump being declared as the president-elect of the United States. She expressed grief and sent everyone who feels the same way a shoulder of support.
For Billie Eilish, the issue was singular and very clear. Right now, all the Democratic Party members and Kamala Harris supporters are on X having heated debates on what went wrong, and one major point of contention is how Harris put women, and their right to choose, at the forefront of her campaign. Harris had said that unlike Trump, her adminstration would work with Congress to put Roe v. Wade back and restore the fundamental right of women to choose. Now that Trump has won, Billie Eilish feels that possibility is all but gone, and that’s why she took to her Instagram to write “it’s a war on women.”
For the indie rock star, Ethel Cain, however, the election results were more of a philosophical indictment of the general 21st Century American psyche. She started her scathing remarks by saying that America has beaten and broken down its citizens to the point that the only way they can find any strength is by pegging their hopes onto demagogues who make them feel like they’re also in the corridors of power. According to Cain’s assessment, the white men are turning to Nazism to dissociate from the carnage around them, and the minorities think they can join in power by punching down, but they’re actually punching sideways. We can only do so much justice to her eloquent statement; we’d advise you to just read it for yourself.
Lili Reinhart, on the other hand, did something that’s slowly getting lost in the fray, and that’s examining Trump’s personal conduct over the past few decades. This is someone who has been accused of racial discrimination, tax evasion, and even sexual assault. Reinhart is questioning the people who voted for Trump despite these allegations and expressed that her heart breaks for all the women whose voices have been drowned out in the room.
Jamie Lee Curtis also questioned what this election win will mean for minority groups and how this will mean that it will be difficult to get reproductive healthcare. But that’s not to say there was only despair going around; Curtis also added that people will push back the American way, one protest at a time.
For Don’t Look Up and Vice director, Adam McKay, however, this result meant something completely different to him because he felt the wound was completely self-inflicted. He took to X and echoed Bernie Sanders’ sentiments, lamenting how the strategies implemented by the Democrats, such as aligning with the Cheneys and embracing fracking, made him weary of the party in general, and now he’s even considering and suggesting a switch to the Green Party. What is most important for everyone right now is joining together and finding a solution without fragmenting ourselves. It’s time to be organized, not break apart.