The former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich has said Madonna “ought to be arrested” for telling the crowd at the Women’s March on Washington that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House”.



The singer said on Sunday that she had been speaking metaphorically. “I am not a violent person,” she wrote on Instagram. “I spoke in metaphor and I shared two ways of looking at things - one was to be hopeful, and one was to feel anger and outrage, which I have personally felt.”

During an interview on Fox & Friends, Gingrich accused Madonna of changing her tune because “she now understands she’s at risk”, adding that she was part of “an emerging leftwing fascism”.

Madonna’s speech led some television networks to abruptly cut away from their live feeds of the march on Saturday.

She led the crowd in chants of “Yes, we’re ready” to take on policies promoted by Donald Trump, who alienated many women during the election campaign with comments about rivals’ attractiveness and promises to outlaw or diminish abortion rights.

Madonna preceded the chants with coarse words for critics of the march. “To our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything, fuck you,” she said.