Scooter Braun’s feud with Taylor Swift has had a lasting effect on him.
Braun, the music exec previously best known for discovering Justin Bieber, has had a public back and forth with the singer since June, when his company bought her former label, Big Machine Records, and became the new owner of many of her hit songs. After an unhappy Swift publicly called out Braun and label founder Scott Borchetta on the sale, Braun said he and his family faced death threats from angry fans.
The experience shook him so much, in fact, that he’s rethinking his long-term plans of going into politics.
“Public office is something I’ve thought about in the past, but only because I get very frustrated by a lack of leadership. The reason I have shied away from it is because I have young children and I have to be careful…” Braun told British GQ in an interview published May 8. “Recently I was attacked very publicly by someone I don’t know, someone who refused to have a conversation with me, and I wish that person nothing but the best and hope that one day a dialogue is had, because I think it all could have been avoided with proper dialogue.
“But what it did teach me was that if my children were teenagers, if they were a little bit older, this could have been very hard for them,” he said. “And I don’t know if I’m comfortable being in public office knowing the amount of ridicule and exposure you get and I don’t know if I want to put my children through that. So right now I’m trying to do the best I can from the private sector.”
Although Braun never mentioned Swift by name, he pleaded with the “Lover” singer to sit down and have a discussion with him in November, just before her much-anticipated performance at the American Music Awards. She had told fans that her former record label was preventing her from singing her old songs on the night she was being presented with the very first Artist of the Decade Award. Big Machine argued that Swift could always perform her own songs live.
TMZ reported in August 2017 that Braun had been approached by Democratic fundraisers in California to run for that state’s governorship.
He and his wife, Yael Cohen, share three young children.
