Music producer and singer Pharrell Williams bashed Donald Trump at an industry conference on Tuesday and said his defeat in the upcoming presidential election would be “easy” if every woman in America voted to elect Hillary Clinton.
“If all the women in this nation decided to vote and support the first female candidate, there’d be nothing to worry about,” Williams said in an interview at Variety‘s Inclusion summit at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills. “It’s that easy.”
“Has she been dishonest about things? Sure. Have you?” Williams said of Clinton, before insisting that “she don’t lie no more than any other politician does.”
The Happy singer endorsed Clinton in March 2014, telling GQ magazine: “We’re about to have a female president. Hillary’s gonna win.”
Asked about increasing polarization during the presidential campaign, the Grammy-winner paused and then pleaded with women to “save the nation” by not electing another “destructive” male president.
“That silence in this room right now is often what I feel when you see some of the things that are being said, not just about my culture, but about women,” Williams said. “I’m praying that women come together and save this nation. You think about the destructive things that have come from mankind, it’s mostly men.”
.@Pharrell Williams says he's praying for our nation #ElectionDay (Watch) pic.twitter.com/lswxZSKaIz
— Variety (@Variety) November 2, 2016
Refusing to say Donald Trump’s name, Williams simply alluded to the Republican candidate’s campaign slogan.
“Are we going to let this other situation take over and remind us what ‘great’ used to be?” William asked the audience.
“It’s not a code, it’s blatant,” Williams said of Trump’s campaign refrain Make America Great Again. “It made me not want to wear red white and blue for a while, that rally. Those things that were being said. Those t-shirts. I call them the bumper stickers. Cause that’s how they talk. Just like bumper stickers.”
Williams appeared at the Inclusion summit to promote the film Hidden Figures, which tells the true story of a team of African-American female mathematicians who provide NASA with the mathematical data needed to successfully launch its Mercury and Apollo programs.
“The female contribution to society was not acknowledged like it should be,” Williams said of the film, which is set in the mid-1960’s. “Women’s contributions were often dismissed, discounted. The idea that we get a chance to actually go back and shine a light on the amazing accomplishments of these women — and African-American women, you know. It’s one thing to be a woman in the 1960s. It’s another thing to be an African-American woman in the 1960s.”
Williams produced the score for Hidden Figures, along with award-winning composer Hans Zimmer.
On Thursday, Williams is set to appear alongside Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at a Clinton campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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