CLOSE Shania Twain has apologised for saying if she were American she would have voted for Donald Trump for president, even though he's offensive. Wochit 
 
 Shania Twain hits the road for her Now tour this spring. (Photo: CHARLES SYKES/INVISION/AP) 
 
 Seeing how she’s a Canadian citizen, Shania Twain couldn't vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But the country crossover star says she would have cast her ballot for President Trump. 
 
 "I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest," Twain says in a new interview published Sunday by The Guardian. "Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want (BS). I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?" 
 
 By Sunday evening, Twain had backpedaled from her remarks, apologizing for her "awkward" answer and saying the question caught her off guard. 
 
 "I am passionately against discrimination of any kind and hope it’s clear from the choices I have made, and the people I stand with, that I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current President," she tweeted. "My limited understanding was that the President talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to, as he was NOT a politician. 
 
 "My answer was awkward, but certainly should not be taken as representative of my values nor does it mean I endorse him. I make music to bring people together. My path will always be one of inclusivity, as my history shows." 
 
 I would like to apologise to anybody I have offended in a recent interview with the Guardian relating to the American President. The question caught me off guard. As a Canadian, I regret answering this unexpected question without giving my response more context (1/4) — Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018 
 
 I am passionately against discrimination of any kind and hope it’s clear from the choices I have made, and the people I stand with, that I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current President (2/4) — Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018 
 
 I was trying to explain, in response to a question about the election, that my limited understanding was that the President talked to a portion of America like an accessible person they could relate to, as he was NOT a politician (3/4) — Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018 
 
 My answer was awkward, but certainly should not be taken as representative of my values nor does it mean I endorse him. I make music to bring people together. My path will always be one of inclusivity, as my history shows. (4/4) — Shania Twain (@ShaniaTwain) April 22, 2018 
 
 Other revelations from the 52-year-old singer’s interview: 
 
 • She alleges that her stepfather abused her sexually, physically and psychologically, starting when she was about 10. 
 
 “Sexual abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it's somebody you know,” Twain says of her childhood in Ontario. “I learned to block it out. Abusers need to manipulate you, whether it's before or after, and what I said to myself is: ‘OK, there's something wrong with this person and that person is not well.'" 
 
 Twain opted to stick the abuse out rather than report it and be separated from her siblings in foster homes, she says: “There is something in me that says a family should stay together.” 
 
 • She still has bad blood with Marie-Anne Thiébaud, her former best friend who split up her marriage to producer Mutt Lange a decade ago. (The singer went on to marry Thiebaud’s husband, Frederic, in 2011.) “There was one song I wrote about my cheating friend and there was a lot of (f-words) in there. I hated her, so that’s the best word to use when you hate somebody.” 
 
 And she’s not over it, either. "I do really nasty things in my dreams to her," Twain says. "I'm always cutting her hair or shaving it off.” 
 
 • When Lyme disease left Twain with vocal paresis in the 2000s, “I never thought I’d sing again,” she says. (She recently underwent laryngoplasty, a surgery to reconstruct her vocal box, that left her with a two-inch scar across her neck.) "I was too embarrassed to tell anybody that I couldn't sing. For a long time, I didn't even know why I couldn't sing." 
 
 Twain released her comeback album Now last fall, her first new studio album in 15 years. Her summer tour of North America kicks off May 3 in Tacoma, Wash. 
 
 CLOSE With the release of 'Now,' country superstar Shania Twain is back. She talks about her reborn career and her exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. (June 28) AP 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2F8anu8 ||||| Image via Getty. 
 
 In an interview with U.K. magazine Rollacoasta, a member of One Direction who is not Zayn or Harry shared a story about the time Donald Trump demanded the band to vacate one of his New York hotels after they declined to meet his daughter. (Based on age, presumably Tiffany and not Ivanka.) 
 
 “Trump actually kicked us out of his hotel once,” 1D-er Liam Payne told the mag, continuing: 
 
 You wouldn’t believe it. It was about [meeting] his daughter. He phoned up our manager and we were asleep. He said ‘well, wake them up’ and I was like ‘no’ and then he wouldn’t let us use the underground garage. Obviously in New York we can’t really go outside. New York is ruthless for us...So he was like, ‘OK, then I don’t want you in my hotel.’ So we had to leave. 
 
 As Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson reminds us, 1D fans—even after the group called it quits—are not a crew you wish to anger, even when you’re commander-in-chief: 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 ...God Almighty, you do not want to run afoul of those people. Trust me. You don’t. I don’t mean the band specifically. But its fans? Hooftie. I’ve mixed it up with them and it is not pleasant. They are tireless and unwavering. Which I can respect. They’re fighting for a good cause. But yikes. An American war with 1D fans would drain us of much blood and treasure, an endless conflict of such murky moral justification that it would only serve to further divide this nation. This could be a catastrophe. And it could happen. 
 
 Hm, I concur with Lawson that Trump has picked a fight that he’s not prepared for, but—counter point—maybe that’s a good thing? Hell hath no fury like a One Direction fan scorned and if they can overwhelm the voting booths during the midterm elections and the 2020 elections—much like they have with, say, the People’s Choice Awards—to avenge 1D’s honor, they just might save us. 
 
 Like hyenas, terrifying in their own right, taking down a hairless, spray-tanned lion—both brutal and mesmerizing. ||||| OVER THE WEEKEND there was a fair bit of argument about the decision by a small restaurant in Lexington, Va., not to serve dinner to President Trump’s press secretary. It wasn’t the first time recently that strong political feelings have spilled into what used to be considered the private sphere. We understand the strength of the feelings, but we don’t think the spilling is a healthy development. 
 
 Sarah Huckabee Sanders was dining with a few other people at the Red Hen in Lexington Friday night. Several of the restaurant’s staff are gay and objected to Ms. Sanders’s defense of Mr. Trump’s discriminatory policies against transgender people. The staff also objected to the administration’s recent actions leading to the separation of thousands of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Respecting her staff’s wishes, the restaurant owner politely asked Ms. Sanders to leave, and Ms. Sanders politely acceded. She then tweeted about the episode, turning it into a public controversy. 
 
 This followed by a few days the very public heckling of two architects of that border policy, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, at Washington restaurants. Last month a Nebraska sociology professor was found guilty of vandalism for spraying false blood at the home of a National Rifle Association lobbyist in Alexandria. 
 
 It’s not a new tactic for protesters of one sort or another to target a public official’s home or private life. But never-at-rest social media have blurred the line between work hours and private time. Cellphone cameras make it ever easier to intrude and broadcast. 
 
 Most obviously, passions are running high. Those who defend the Red Hen staff, or Ms. Nielsen’s hecklers, say this is no ordinary policy dispute. Mr. Trump has ordered terrible violations of human rights at the border, he is demonizing immigrants by his actions and his rhetoric, and people need to speak up however they can. 
 
 They will get no argument from us regarding Mr. Trump’s border policy, and when it comes to coarsening the debate, he is the prime offender. The poisonous fruits could be seen, as it happens, Saturday morning in a vile tweet from Ms. Sanders’s father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, that associated House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, with the vicious MS-13 gang. 
 
 We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families? 
 
 Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.
– As a Canadian, Shania Twain can't vote in American elections—and after taking flak over the weekend, she may give up commenting on them as well. The country star faced a major backlash after telling a Guardian interviewer that she probably would have voted for Trump in the 2016 election. "I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest," she said. "Do you want straight or polite? ... l would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?" In a series of tweets Sunday, Twain apologized for the "awkward" answer to the "unexpected" interview question and stressed that she does not endorse Trump's policies, reports USA Today. "I am passionately against discrimination of any kind and hope it’s clear from the choices I have made, and the people I stand with, that I do not hold any common moral beliefs with the current President," the 52-year-old singer said in one tweet. Twain is beginning her first album tour since 2002. In the interview, which can be read in full here, she also discusses issues including childhood sexual abuse. She says she is still angry at former friend and personal assistant Marie-Anna Thiebaud over the affair that ended both their marriages. "I do really nasty things in my dreams to her," says Twain, who is now married to Thiebaud's ex. "I'm always cutting her hair or shaving it off."