Demi Lovato has never been one to shy away from politics, and she went hard when dragging Donald Trump in “Commander In Chief.” In the song, released Oct. 14, the 28-year-old singer directs her fury at the current U.S. President over his failed policies, greed, and cruelty. “Haven’t they suffered enough? / But you can’t get enough of / Shuttin’ down systеms for personal gain /Fightin’ fires with flyers and prayin’ for rain / Do you gеt off on pain? / We’re not pawns in your game
“Commander in Chief, honestly / If I did the things you do / I couldn’t sleep, seriously,” she sings on the chorus, per Genius, ending it with a knockout line about how Trump, 74, came down with COVID-19 after downplaying the severity of the pandemic. “Do you even know the truth? / We’re in a state of crisis, people are dyin’ / While you line your pockets deep / Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still / Be able to breathe?”
Demi writing what is spiritually a Donald Trump diss track is not surprising. She was a proud supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election and performed at that year’s Democratic National Convention. Since Trump’s election, Demi has been an outspoken critic of the president. “Be the f-cking leader we need you to be,” Demi demanded of Donald in a message posted to her Instagram Story in June, following the protests over George Floyd’s killing. “I’m actually begging you because we’re stuck with you until November. Then you will have to pay for your silence, lack of leadership, and action.”
“There’s been so many times that I’ve wanted to write the President a letter or sit down with him and ask him these questions,” she told CNN when discussing the song. “And then I thought, I don’t really actually want to do that, and I thought one way that I could do that is writing a song and releasing it for the whole world to hear and then he has to answer those questions to everyone and not just me.”
The “Still Have Me” singer also discussed her decision to jump into the political waters and how that puts her at risk of a “shut up and sing”-level backlash. “You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t,” she told CNN. “You can list Taylor Swift as a perfect example of that exact saying … for years she got trashed because she wasn’t taking a stance and wasn’t standing up for these rights and she kind of took a back seat and now she’s become very political, and there are people that are unhappy with that too. It’s just, like, you have to live what feels authentic to you. To me, that’s using my platform to speak out about the things that I see that are wrong.”