Scooter Braun Calls Himself the ‘Bad Guy’ While Finally Addressing Taylor Swift Drama
Scooter Braun and Taylor Swift have been feuding for nearly six months now, and though the pop star has had no problem addressing the drama directly, the music businessman has vaguely mentioned the situation but never spoke about it point blank. Until now.
On Thursday (November 21), he discussed the incident during a Q&A at the 2019 Entertainment Industry Conference.
"I haven't talked about this in six months. Not once. I haven't made a statement about it," he said before giving his views on the ordeal that stemmed from him purchasing Swift's old record label, Big Machine. "I just think we live in a time of toxic division, and of people thinking that social media is the appropriate place to air out on each other and not have conversations. And I don't like politicians doing it. I don't like anybody doing it."
"If that means that I've got to be the bad guy longer, I'll be the bad guy longer, but I'm not going to participate," he continued before making it clear he'd love to have a "closed door" talk with the singer and that he believes a lot of the controversy stems from "miscommunications" that he chose not to speak about publicly because he doesn't want to "add to the narrative."
He also admitted that the saga is taking quite the toll on his personal life. "It's hard, because I can handle it pretty easily, but when it gets to a place where there's death threats and there's offices being called and people being threatened… it's gotten out of hand," he shared. "Right now we're in a scary time where people say things and then people might not be in the right mindset and do really horrible things. And we're inciting all of this by continuing these arguments in public. We just need to go behind closed doors and see if we can have a conversation. And if we're not having conversations, then I don't think we're going to find resolution."
After a couple drama-free months, Swift penned an open letter accusing Braun and former Big Machine owner Scott Borchetta of attempting to block the music from her first six albums being used at the American Music Awards and an upcoming Netflix documentary. The news sparked angry Swifties to leak Braun and Borchetta's personal phone numbers online.