From Charlie Kirk to Vivek Ramaswamy, right-wingers are publicly panicking that the pop star Taylor Swift may endorse Democratic president Joe Biden.
by Jessica Corbett, CommonDreams.org
Perhaps to distract from former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 91 felony charges or the unpopularity of GOP policies, or simply fearful of Taylor Swift’s deeply dedicated fanbase, right-wing public figures are ramping up attacks on the music industry giant amid speculation that she may endorse Democratic President Joe Biden for reelection.
Reporting Monday on the president’s “anti-Trump battle plan,” The New York Timesdetailed that “Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers, and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: the global superstar.”
A day earlier, Swift attended the game in which her pro-Bud Light and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine boyfriend, Travis Kelce, helped the Kansas City Chiefs advance to Super Bowl LVIII—after which, as Rolling StonenotedMonday, “long-standing conspiracy theories around the NFL’s ‘scriptwriting’ for football seasons clashed with right-wing conspiracy theorists claiming Swift’s involvement with Kelce is part of a deep state plot to gin up support” for Biden, whom the pop star endorsed in 2020.
Because of Swift and Kelce, some Republicans prepping for the professional football season’s finale next month are “now rooting for a team from the city they portray as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah: San Francisco,” Politicopointed out Tuesday.
As Rolling Stone reported:
Far-right influencer Rogan O’Handley went so far as to suggest that if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce would trigger an apocalyptic chain of events that would kill millions. “You MUST defeat the Chiefs,” O’Handley wrote in an X post addressed to the San Francisco 49ers. “If you don’t, Mr. Pfizer and his girlfriend are going to tour the country as ‘world champions’ helping elect Joe Biden WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die. The fate of the free world rests upon your shoulders.”
Former Republican Illinois congressional candidate Jack Lombardi II similarly said in a series of social media posts following the Chiefs and 49ers games that “I have never been more convinced that the Super Bowl is rigged” and “Taylor Swift is nothing more than a controlled influencer who has been put to work by those who seek to destroy America.”
Responding on Monday to a social media post from far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—who earlier this month dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump—also suggested that the Super Bowl will be rigged for the Chiefs and predicted a forthcoming Biden endorsement from the power couple.
Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2024
Semafor‘s David Weigel shared on social media multiple examples of right-wingers melting down over the pop star and the president during Turning Point Action’s Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas on Monday and Tuesday.
According to Weigel, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk warned of Swift’s possible Biden endorsement, saying: “That will be a tsunami that will be very difficult to thwart… We better be prepared. It seems as though things are aligning for that.”
A Tuesday video shows Posobiec highlighting Swift’s history of boosting voter registrations. On National Voting Day last September, Swift took to Instagram, encouraging Americans to “raise your voices” and register through the nonprofit Vote.org, which said her post was followed by over 35,000 registrations.
Posobiec also directed conference attendees to Swift’s 2020 support for Biden and her first overtly political comments in 2018, when she postedon Instagram that she would be voting for Democratic congressional candidates in Tennessee and condemned Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who was ultimately elected to the U.S. Senate.
A 2020 documentary about Swift, Miss Americana, features a discussion preceding that post. In the film, Swift makes her opposition to Trump clear and expresses regret that she didn’t speak out against the ex-president during the 2016 cycle.
OAN host says it makes sense for Biden to have Taylor Swift date Travis Kelce in a massive deep state psy op, because sports in general starting at the youth level is also used to brainwash kids when they should be focused on Jesus instead. pic.twitter.com/VBySLURPes— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 30, 2024
Trump’s campaign on Tuesday dismissed the anticipated impact of Swift weighing in on November’s election, with senior adviser Jason Miller telling Rolling Stone that “Joe Biden might be counting on Taylor Swift to save him, but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.'” However, Swift’s star power has reportedly frustrated the former president.
Along with pointing to “members of MAGAland’s upper crust… plotting to declare—as one source close to Donald Trump calls it—a ‘holy war’ on the pop megastar,” the outlet cites unnamed sources who said the GOP front-runner has “privately claimed that he is ‘more popular’ than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does” as well as “commented to some confidants that it ‘obviously’ made no sense that he was not named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year.”
Meanwhile, “the Biden crew and its alumni network have watched it all with eye rolls and a touch of mockery,” and worked with celebrities regularly involved in Democratic politics, like Sophia Bush and Kerry Washington, according to Politico‘s “West Wing Playbook.”
The newsletter added that “as much as the Swift-Kelce drama says about our politics, it may say more about our culture—in particular, the reaction to a powerful woman finding her way into the spotlight reserved for the ultimate male sport.”
As Media Matters for America laid out in a roundup late last year, “right-wing media spent 2023 lobbing sexist attacks” at Swift, painting her as “a fake Christian, a Democratic agent, and possibly a witch” who is “ruining football by dating an NFL player.”
Continuing the trend in the new year, Fox News‘ Jesse Watters claimed earlier this month that “around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh responded with a reference to one of her songs, saying that “as for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”
Despite that statement and even some conservatives pleading for their ideological allies to “STOP BEING NUTS,” right-wing commentator Benny Johnson shared a nearly 42-minute video on social media Monday, writing: “It’s All FAKE. Taylor Swift EXPOSED as a FED OP To RIG 2024 Election for Biden | Pentagon ADMITS It.”
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