With a single post on social media Saturday, Cher upended the assumption that when people get older, they turn into bitter, cranky conservatives. The singer and actor, who is three weeks older than Republican candidate for president Donald Trump, proudly endorsed vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for the nation’s top job, saying that Harris and her vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz “will fight to protect our rights.”
Cher’s endorsement of Harris isn’t a huge surprise. In interviews with Vanity Fair spanning five decades, the star has endorsed Democratic candidates. “I know I’m not supposed to have any opinions about politics, because I’m famous,” she told Vanity Fair in 2010, saying then that she’d supported Hillary Clinton during her first run for president in 2008, telling interviewer Krista Smith then that she appreciated then-president Barack Obama, but couldn’t shake the feeling Clinton would have done a better job.
“I would be willing to pay a lot more taxes, because I make a lot more money, but I don’t want to give them more to just fuck things up more,” she said then. “”It really should fall on people like me to get together and do things to help the people in this country. If you’re not worrying about how to put food on your table, you [should be] worrying about why other people don’t have food on their table.”
Back then, it was George W. Bush who incited her ire, to the point that she’d call into C-SPAN to air her frustration with the administration. “I got so obsessed with it that it was kind of interfering with my life,” she said in 2010.
In the 2020s, it’s Trump and his enduring support across the U.S. that frustrates her. “I almost got an ulcer the last time,” he was president, she told the Guardian last year. “If he gets in, who knows? This time I will leave [the country].”
Chief among Cher’s concerns are the attitudes Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, have about transgender people. “It’s something like 500 bills they’re trying to pass,” to restrict the rights of trans folks, she says of the Republican party. “I was with two trans girls the other night – and of course my own child,” Chaz Bono, is trans. “I was saying ‘We’ve got to stand together.’ I don’t know what their eventual plan is for trans people. I don’t put anything past them.”
Cher made her opposition to Trump, and her support for Harris and Walz, official on Saturday, with a video posted to TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Each bore the same message: “I’ve followed Kamala Harris since she was my US. senator. She fought for me then and she is fighting for all of us now. That’s why I’m proudly voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
“I know they will fight to protect our rights,” she continued, “and I’m so grateful to be able to make my voice count this year. I hope you will too.”
Cher’s endorsement for Harris follows those of a long and diverse list of other music business legends including James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Patti LaBelle, and Stevie Nicks, as well as newer acts including Beyonce, Megan Thee Stallion, and Taylor Swift. On Saturday, Harris was joined on the campaign trail by two other pop stars: Lizzo and Usher, who appeared at rallies for the candidate in Detroit and Atlanta, respectively.
“This is the swing state of all swing states, so every last vote here counts,” PBS quotes Lizzo as saying at the Michigan event. “If you ask me if America is ready for its first woman president, I only have one thing to say: “It’s about damn time!”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
The Amateur Art Sleuth and the Missing Masterpiece
-
How a Grey’s Anatomy Writer Used Lies to Make Must-See TV
-
Harris Just Comes Out and Says It: Trump Is F–king Nuts
-
Tell Me Lies’ Twisted Season Finale, Explained
-
Princess Diana and the Occult
-
Steve Bannon Has Called His “Army” to Do Battle—No Matter Who Wins in November
-
The Menendez Brothers’ Aunt Joan on Why They Must Be Freed
-
Inside the Violence and Radicalization of America’s Neo-Nazi Youth
-
The Olivia Nuzzi–Ryan Lizza Saga Has Reached a Salacious New Level
The post Cher Endorses Presidential Ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appeared first on Vanity Fair.
