Rihanna has a message for Americans who sat out the 2024 presidential election: not voting does not necessarily mean escaping responsibility for the result.
The singer and Fenty Beauty founder weighed in on Donald Trump's return to the White House after a clip of political commentator Joy Reid appeared on Hollywood Unlocked's Instagram account on October 27, 2026.
When one commenter blamed Trump's supporters for the election outcome, Rihanna reportedly responded with a pointed addition: "and believe it or not, those who didn’t vote at all, also did this!" The exchange was subsequently documented by Mandatory.
Her intervention shifted the argument beyond those who actively supported Trump to Americans who never cast a ballot.
What Joy Reid actually said about Trump's victory
The discussion originated from an October 26 episode of Forward by Charles M. Blow, in which the former MSNBC presenter discussed Trump's presidency, the political priorities of his supporters and her departure from the television network.
Reid argued that Trump's election reflected what a significant portion of the American electorate wanted, particularly voters drawn to his positions on immigration, race and national identity. Her assessment was deliberately provocative: "I think Trump, in a very real sense, is what we deserve."
Rihanna's response introduced another group into that debate: people who chose not to participate in the election at all.
Rihanna couldn't vote in the election herself
There is a particularly relevant detail behind the singer's criticism. Rihanna is a citizen of Barbados and was not eligible to vote in the 2024 US presidential election.
That did not stop her from encouraging Americans to participate. On November 4, 2024, she published a playful Instagram video joking about trying to enter a polling station using her son's passport. The post carried the hashtag #votecauseicant and included references widely interpreted as support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Her latest comment is therefore consistent with a position she expressed before Trump defeated Harris: voting is a right she cannot exercise in the United States, but one she wants eligible Americans to use.
How many Americans actually skipped the 2024 election?
The scale of non-participation helps explain why Rihanna's remark carries political weight.
According to the US Election Assistance Commission, nearly 65% of the country's citizen voting-age population participated in the 2024 general election, with more than 158 million ballots counted.
That leaves roughly one-third of voting-age citizens who did not participate. However, those figures cannot establish how abstaining Americans would have voted, or whether greater turnout would have changed the result. Non-voters cannot automatically be counted as potential Harris supporters, and presidential elections are decided through state-by-state Electoral College results.
Rihanna's argument is ultimately about civic responsibility rather than a demonstrable mathematical explanation for Trump's victory. She is challenging the idea that staying out of an election necessarily means staying out of its consequences.
