Madonna clarifies ‘blowing up the White House’ comment: ‘Taken wildly out of context’

Madonna said Saturday that she’d thought “an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” The next day, she clarified what she had meant in her speech at the Women’s March rally in Washington, D.C.

The statement in question? “Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet W.H. Auden once wrote on the eve of World War II, we must love one another or die. I choose love.” 

She also chose profanity, dropping a trio of F-bombs during her speech, which was covered live on a number of networks. 

“[I]t's important people hear and understand my speech in its entirety rather than one phrase taken wildly out of context,” the Material Girl said Sunday on Instagram, characterizing herself as a nonviolent person who was not promoting violence when she described a “revolution” starting after “good did not win this election.”

Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff, reacted to her speech on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“Some of the things that were said yesterday, I’m not going to give the person any credit, but one of the actors said that -- or one of the singers said she wanted to blow up the White House,” Priebus said. “I mean, can you imagine saying that about President Obama?” 

On Monday, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told “Fox & Friends” that Madonna “ought to be arrested.”

The singer explained on Instagram that she had spoken “in metaphor.” 

“I shared two ways of looking at things — one was to be hopeful, and one was to feel anger and outrage, which I have personally felt,” Madonna said. “However, I know that acting out of anger doesn’t solve anything. And the only way to change things for the better is to do it with love.”

On its website, the Secret Service explains that while it is interested in “legitimate information about threats to those it protects, it “does not desire or solicit information pertaining to individuals or groups expressing legitimate criticism of, or political opposition to, the policies and decisions of the government or government officials.”

cdz@latimes.com

@theCDZ