Farewell
Rihanna confirms she declined the Super Bowl halftime show in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick
The rumors are true, Rihanna has confirmed: she turned down the Super Bowl halftime show to support Colin Kaepernick.
Rihanna spoke with Vogue for a cover story published Wednesday and was asked about reports last year that she declined an offer to perform at the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show "because of the kneeling controversy," as US Weekly reported. Kaepernick in 2016 sparked a movement to kneel during the national anthem at NFL games to protest racial inequality and police brutality.
"Absolutely," she told Vogue when asked if she turned the offer down in solidarity with Kaepernick. "I couldn't dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn't be a sellout. I couldn't be an enabler."
Rihanna went on to say of the NFL that "there's things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way." Maroon 5 ultimately performed at Super Bowl LIII.
While on politics, Rihanna also slammed President Trump for talking about the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio as a mental health problems, calling this line of thinking "completely racist" because "put an Arab man with that same weapon in that same Walmart and there is no way that Trump would sit there and address it publicly as a mental health problem."
"The most mentally ill human being in America right now seems to be the president," she added. Read the full cover story at Vogue.