When it comes to feuding with Donald Trump, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told the 2016 graduating class of Bridgewater State University that she looks to one of the "great philosophers of our time": Taylor Swift.
"If you know who you are, you won't get caught up when the times get tough or the naysayers try to stop you. Or to put it different differently, as one of the great philosophers of our time said, haters gonna hate hate hate hate – knowing who you are helps you shake it off," Warren said in her commencement address Saturday.
Warren has had her fair share of hate thrown at her in recent weeks, after taking on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in a days-long Twitter feud – a position she never expected to be in.
"On my day of graduation I never imagined I would visit foreign countries, I never imagined I would be a commencement speaker, I never imagined I would get into a Twitter war with Donald Trump," Warren said during her commencement speech. "But here I am, living the life."
She had three pieces of advice that afternoon: Welcome life's unexpected turns (even if it means warring with Trump), invest time in discovering who you are, and fight off the naysayers.
"Washington is filled with people that say 'No, it can't be done, never, never, never,' and these days they say it in nastier and nastier ways," Warren said.
But standing your ground is the best defense, Warren said, citing her own work on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
"Now, before you go home and say to yourself, 'Good grief I was at my college graduation and I applauded for a federal agency, I must be turning into a nerd,' let me tell you, that little consumer agency has been up and running for nearly five years now, and it has already forced some of the biggest financial institutions in this country to return more than $11 billion directly to the people they cheated," Warren said. "That is government that works."
