Rhiannon Giddens
Role at the time: Musician, interviewed on Democracy Now!
Statement summary
Musician Rhiannon Giddens, interviewed on Democracy Now!, said it was not a surprise that Macklemore spoke in support of Palestinians given his history, and that Ed Sheeran should have anticipated it when he hired him. She said Sheeran has power as a wealthy, famous musician that he is not using, calling his decision to remove Macklemore "folding," and said that for her the decision would not have been difficult. She said Sheeran has the right to make that choice but the public has the right to hold him accountable for it, and argued attention should also go to Robert Kraft as the person who organized the pressure behind the removal.
“What is at issue for me is that when you hire somebody like Macklemore, who's been very pro-Palestinian in his... this is not a surprise, right? It shouldn't be a surprise. [...] I'm still just like, we're like, these people are not gods. You know what I mean? And they're fallible human beings. And it's like, he hires all these Irish people, and then Macklemore, and then is like, I don't know. It's just like, well, I don't know what he was expecting, you know? [...] As a musician, I'm very interested in that, because I'm like, you have power there. Why are you not using that power, right? He's folding. [...] For me, it wasn't a difficult decision. [...] If it doesn't direct the attention to Robert Kraft and if it doesn't direct the attention to the people who actually have the power who are doing these things, that's -- then it's for naught.”
Segment of a Democracy Now! interview with musician Rhiannon Giddens, posted to X on September 18, 2026. Giddens also discusses Aaron Rowe's and Beoga's withdrawals and Robert Kraft's role, and says Ed Sheeran has every right to do whatever he wants while maintaining that the public may still hold him accountable for the choice. The quoted wording is our transcription of the video; the X caption alone does not capture the substance of her remarks on Sheeran and Kraft specifically.
Why we used this label
Giddens treats the speech itself as unsurprising and unobjectionable given Macklemore's known history, and frames the removal as a failure by Sheeran to use his power responsibly, which is a defence of the conduct under scrutiny and a rejection of the removal. The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”, since she says Sheeran "has every right to do whatever he wants." That loses because acknowledging his legal or practical latitude to make the choice is not itself an endorsement of the choice; she immediately adds that the public retains the right to hold him accountable, and the substantive weight of the passage is critical of the decision throughout. This is consistent with how we recorded Philip DeFranco's criticism of Sheeran (1009) on this same case.