In 2021, Parton explained to PEOPLE why she tried to avoid wading into partisanship throughout her life
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Dolly-Parton-Speaking-GLAAD-73db00681e0e49b48b10f008020cd8bf.jpg "Singer Dolly Parton speaks onstage at the 22nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel on April 10, 2011")
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NEED TO KNOW
- Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 80, tried to avoid wading into the United States’ increasingly partisan politics throughout her life, with a few notable exceptions
- During a 2021 interview with PEOPLE, the iconic singer-songwriter explained that she tried to be “very careful” when she spoke out and made use of God’s “gift to be able to talk to” her adoring fans
- Though she avoided partisanship, she was passionate about being “accepting and loving,” often speaking out in support of LGBTQ+ rights and gay marriage
Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 80, tried to avoid wading into the United States’ increasingly partisan politics throughout her life, with a few notable exceptions.
During a 2021 interview with PEOPLE, the iconic singer-songwriter explained that she tried to be “very careful” when she spoke out and made use of God’s “gift to be able to talk to” her adoring fans.
“I know whatever I say, people are going to listen, and they’re going to make more of it than maybe what I meant. So I have to be careful,” Parton told PEOPLE at the time. “Of course I have my opinion, but I’m not an opinionated person as a rule. You’re allowed your own beliefs and your own faith, but you don’t have to use it like a weapon when it could be a tool.”
At the time, Parton had made headlines for helping fund Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine with a $1 million donation to Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“I probably get a lot more credit than I deserve, but I was happy to be part of that and to be able to try to stop something in its tracks that’s really become such a monster for all of us,” Parton told a U.K. radio station in 2021.
Credit: Shawn Miller
But like many aspects of 21st-century American life, the vaccines became a partisan point of debate as often false anti-vaccine conspiracies spread to millions of people.
“I see people I love and appreciate for loving me, but honestly, it kind of frightens me. I do feel pressure when people put me on such a pedestal. I don’t deserve all that,” Parton told PEOPLE in 2021. “I ask God every day to let Him shine through me. He’s given me that gift to be able to talk to them, and I’m very careful with it. And people don’t really come to see me be me — they come to see me be them, the parts of me they can relate to.”
When Parton did speak out about issues that mattered to her, it was often to advocate for childhood literacy through her Imagination Library initiative — which donated more than 300 million books to children across the globe since 1995.
“I’m kind of addicted to the feeling of giving,” the country star told PEOPLE in 2021 for a People of the Year cover story. “Knowing that I’m doing something good for someone else.”
Her passion and work on childhood literacy drew praise from many politicians from both major parties after her family announced her death on Tuesday.
“Dolly Parton was an American icon who brought people together and spread joy. In Kentucky, she shared her love of reading through her Imagination Library, sparking brighter futures for thousands of children across our commonwealth,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear wrote on X, sharing photos of himself and his family with Parton.
President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that “there has never been anyone like her, and never will” and that he was ordering American flags to be flown at half-staff throughout the country for a full week in Parton’s honor.
"Rest in Peace, Dolly! The World loves you." - President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/ZPf8IzybNe
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2026
During the 2016 election, Parton told The New York Times that Hillary Clinton “might make as good a president as anybody ever has” and that she “personally thinks a woman would do a great job,” but declined to endorse a candidate.
“I think no matter if it’s Hillary or Donald Trump, we’re gonna be plagued with PMS either way — presidential mood swings!” she told the Times.
In September 2016, when friend Kenny Rogers favorably called Parton “the Donald Trump of country music,” Parton told Rolling Stone that “me and Donald kind of have the same hair,” but declined to delve into the comparison further.
Parton declined offers for the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice during Trump’s first term, citing the declining health of her husband Carl Dean, who died last year at 82. She then declined the same offer from President Joe Biden.
In December 2020, former President Barack Obama said it was a “screw-up” that he never gave Parton the honor while he was in office.
“That was a screw-up. I’m surprised. I think I assumed that she had already got one, and that was incorrect,” Obama told Stephen Colbert at the time.
Credit: Eric Draper/WireImage
She did visit the White House in 2006 while President George W. Bush was in office, when she was a Kennedy Center honoree.
And presidential historian Michael Beschloss shared a photo of her with President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Dolly Parton and the Carters, White House, 1979: pic.twitter.com/xQQxa64icq
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 25, 2026
In 2023, she told Metro that she wasn’t interested in running for president because “we’ve had enough ‘boobs’ in the White House.”
“No. I don’t think anybody could actually do a great job at that. I think we’ve had enough ‘boobs’ in the White House,” Parton, then 77, told the outlet. “I try to do my thing through my songs, through the way I accept people and the way I try to make a difference. I’m not smart enough to be in politics, or maybe I’m too smart.”
“Either way, I’m not qualified for that type of a job,” she added. “But I’m pretty qualified to do what I do, which is to point people in the right direction, to write about it in songs or speak about things.”
Credit: Amanda Edwards/WireImage
When she did try to point people in “the right direction,” it was often in support of LGBTQ+ rights and gay marriage. She first endorsed gay marriage in 2009 in an interview with Joy Behar, six years before the Supreme Court legalized it nationwide.
“They’ve made me the poster child, I think, only because I’m so outspoken as far as being accepting of people in general,” Parton told Larry King in 2016. “I do not believe that we should criticize and judge other people. I think we should be accepting and loving. We are all God’s children. We are who we are, and we should be allowed to be who we are.”
She later publicly pushed back on Tennessee’s anti-transgender laws passed in 2023.
“If there’s something to be judged, that is God’s business,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. “But we are all God’s children and how we are is who we are.”
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