Picture-Illustration: Intelligencer; Pictures: Getty
Taylor Swift’s political leanings have been a subject of debate for a few years now (Swift herself launched a complete documentary about it). The Tortured Poets Division singer has a protracted historical past with Donald Trump, who virtually begged her to not endorse his 2024 opponent. And a troubling variety of People imagine an unhinged conspiracy concept about Biden and Swift rigging the Tremendous Bowl in favor of her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas Metropolis Chiefs.
So what’s actually happening right here? Has Taylor Swift really endorsed a candidate within the 2024 presidential election? What’s her relationship with Biden and Trump? Might Swifties actually determine the election, as some pundits have instructed? Right here’s a information to Swift’s stance on the 2024 election, which we’ll hold up to date and filled with Easter eggs that may let you know the Fame (Taylor’s Model) launch date (simply kidding).
No.
Most likely! She’s but to announce her most popular candidate within the 2024 election, however since she endorsed Biden in 2020, it appears possible that she’ll achieve this once more.
Swift hasn’t commented on Biden lately. She made her first public presidential endorsement a couple of month earlier than the 2020 election, asserting her assist for the Biden-Harris ticket with this tweet, that includes a batch of marketing campaign emblem cookies:
Swift instructed V journal:
The change we want most is to elect a president who acknowledges that individuals of shade need to really feel protected and represented, that girls deserve the precise to decide on what occurs to their our bodies, and that the LGBTQIA+ group deserves to be acknowledged and included. Everybody deserves a authorities that takes world well being dangers critically and places the lives of its individuals first. The one method we are able to start to make issues higher is to decide on leaders who’re keen to face these points and discover methods to work by means of them.
I’ll proudly vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on this 12 months’s presidential election. Beneath their management, I imagine America has an opportunity to begin the therapeutic course of it so desperately wants.
Lately, Swift has periodically inspired her social-media followers to vote. After she posted an Instagram message about registering to vote in September 2023, the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org recorded 35,252 new registrations on Nationwide Voter Registration Day, a 23 p.c enhance over the earlier 12 months.
On March 5, 2024 she inspired her supporters to vote on Tremendous Tuesday, however she didn’t again any particular candidates.
After complicated Swift for Britney Spears throughout his 2023 turkey pardon, Biden made clear this 12 months that he does the truth is know who she is, and would respect one other endorsement.
In February 2024, Biden joked a number of occasions about working with Swift to rig the Tremendous Bowl for the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. He referenced the baseless conspiracy concept — which almost one in 5 People imagine — in his first TikTok and this post-game social-media put up:
When Seth Meyers requested the president to “affirm or deny” that there’s an “lively conspiracy” between him and Swift a short while later, the president answered, “It’s categorized.” He repeated the road when requested if she may endorse him once more in 2024.
Whereas Biden has tried to play it cool in public, in January the New York Occasions reported that his marketing campaign desperately desires Swift to become involved within the 2024 race:
… The largest and most influential endorsement goal is Ms. Swift … Fund-raising appeals from Ms. Swift might be price thousands and thousands of {dollars} for Mr. Biden.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a high Biden surrogate, all however begged Ms. Swift to turn into extra concerned in Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign when he spoke to reporters after a Republican main debate in September.
“Taylor Swift stands tall and distinctive,” he stated. “What she was in a position to accomplish simply in getting younger individuals activated to think about that they’ve a voice and that they need to have a alternative within the subsequent election, I believe, is profoundly highly effective.”
The chatter round Ms. Swift and the potential of reaching her 279 million Instagram followers reached such depth that the Biden workforce urged candidates in a job posting for a social media place to not describe their Taylor Swift technique — the marketing campaign had sufficient ideas already. One concept that has been tossed round, a bit in jest: sending the president to a cease on Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour.
She publicly criticized Trump for the primary time on June 1, 2019 in an open letter to Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander, urging the Republican to make sure protections for the LGBTQ+ group by passing the Equality Act. She stated of then-President Trump:
I personally reject the President’s stance that his administration “helps equal therapy of all,” however that the Equality Act, “in its present kind is stuffed with poison tablets that threaten to find out parental and conscience rights.” No, one can’t take the place that one helps a group, whereas condemning it within the subsequent breath as going in opposition to “conscience” or “parental rights.” That assertion implies that there’s something morally mistaken with you being something aside from heterosexual or cisgender, which is an extremely dangerous letter to ship to a nation stuffed with wholesome and loving households with same-sex, non-binary or transgender mother and father, sons or daughters.
Swift stored her political opinions to herself till the 2018 midterms, when she spoke out in opposition to Tennessee Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn (her resolution to endorse two Democrats in that election was a significant plot level in her documentary Miss Americana). Swift defined why she’d beforehand remained silent in her Instagram put up opposing Blackburn (who went on to win the election):
Previously I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political views, however attributable to a number of occasions in my life and on the earth previously two years, I really feel very otherwise about that now. I all the time have and all the time will solid my vote primarily based on which candidate will shield and battle for the human rights I imagine all of us deserve on this nation. I imagine within the battle for LGBTQ rights, and that any type of discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I imagine that the systemic racism we nonetheless see on this nation in the direction of individuals of shade is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.
Because the 2020 election grew nearer, Swift voiced her assist for the Black Lives Matter motion and criticized Trump a number of occasions on Twitter. In Could 2020 she promised “we are going to vote you out in November”:
And in August 2020, she accused Trump of attempting to sabotage mail-in voting and stated his “ineffective management” had “gravely worsened” the COVID-19 disaster:
Sure, on a couple of event. In January 2020 Swift launched the track “Solely the Younger” to accompany the Miss Americana documentary. The lyrics appeared to make reference to Trump profitable the 2016 election and different political points, like faculty shootings: “You go to class, scared / Questioning the place one of the best hiding spot could be / And the massive unhealthy man and his huge unhealthy clan / Their palms are stained with purple.”
In October 2020, Swift allowed Consultant Eric Swalwell’s Treatment PAC to make use of the track in a pro-Biden advert and obtained a private thanks from Kamala Harris:
Whereas Swift’s 2019 track “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” is much less explicitly anti-Trump, she confirmed in a September 2019 Rolling Stone interview that the high-school metaphor within the track is about Trump-era politics:
There are such a lot of influences that go into that individual track. I wrote it a few months after midterm elections, and I wished to take the concept of politics and choose a metaphorical place for that to exist. And so I used to be serious about a standard American highschool, the place there’s all these sorts of social occasions that might make somebody really feel utterly alienated. And I believe lots of people in our political panorama are simply feeling like we have to huddle up underneath the bleachers and work out a plan to make issues higher.
We all know from this clip of Trump quietly driving his Rolls-Royce whereas listening to “Clean House,” which was filmed by Melania Trump and posted on her Fb web page, that he doesn’t thoughts her music.
Nonetheless, Trump has some points with Swift herself. The ex-president and the pop star are engaged in a reputation contest (in his thoughts, at the least). Rolling Stone reported in January:
Behind the scenes, Trump has reacted to the potential for Biden and Swift teaming up in opposition to him this 12 months not with alarm, however with an prompt projection of ego. In current weeks, the previous president has instructed individuals in his orbit that no quantity of A-list superstar endorsements will save Biden. Trump has additionally privately claimed that he’s “extra widespread” than Swift is and that he has extra dedicated followers than she does, an individual near Trump and one other supply with information of the matter inform Rolling Stone.
Final month, the supply near Trump provides, the ex-president commented to some confidants that it “clearly” made no sense that he was not named Time journal’s 2023 Particular person of the 12 months — an honor that went to none aside from Swift in December.
On February 11, Trump made a determined try and steal consideration from Kelce and Swift and persuade her to not endorse Biden. He posted this on Fact Social hours earlier than the Tremendous Bowl:
Trump has been cautious to not criticize Swift in public. In a November 2023 interview carried out for the forthcoming guide Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America By way of the Wanting Glass, Trump repeatedly known as Swift “stunning,” and questioned whether or not she’s really liberal. Selection printed an excerpt from the guide on June 10:
Trump, often one to punch again at critics, is wise sufficient to know Swift’s fame is on one other degree. “She’s obtained an incredible star high quality,” Trump says. “She actually does.” Trump is effusive as he makes use of considered one of his favourite adjectives to explain ladies—“stunning”— a number of occasions in a row.
“I believe she’s stunning—very stunning! I discover her very stunning. I believe she’s liberal. She most likely doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very proficient. I believe she’s very stunning, really—unusually stunning!” It’s her fame, not her songcraft, that fascinates Trump. When requested about Swift’s music, performed so regularly on the radio that it’s inescapable in each day life, he says, “Don’t understand it nicely.”
Past Swift’s appears to be like, what intrigues Trump essentially the most is the concept— regularly bandied about on-line earlier than she endorsed the Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee in 2018—that she might secretly be supporting him. “However she is liberal, or is that simply an act?” he asks me. “She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me {that a} nation star may be profitable being liberal.”
I inform Trump that Swift is not a rustic star; she’s been making pop music for years. He doesn’t appear conscious of this, however he reaches for a distinct title. “Garth Brooks is liberal. Clarify that! How does it occur? However he’s liberal.” Trump trails off. “It’s a kind of issues . .”
However throughout a closed door assembly with Republican members of Congress on June 13, Trump reportedly complained about Swift being a Biden supporter:
In 2020, Swift formally endorsed Biden lower than a month earlier than Election Day. If she follows that precedent, she may make an endorsement whereas she’s on a break from The Eras Tour. The European leg of her tour runs from Could 9 to August 20, adopted by a ten-week break. Election Day is November 5, and Swift’s tour resumes in Canada the next week.
Might the megastar assist enhance turnout within the November election, particularly amongst youthful voters who aren’t that passionate about one other Biden-Trump matchup? That’s what a number of commentators have instructed. However PolitiFact poured chilly water on the concept:
… it’s misguided to imagine that Swift’s potential involvement within the race could be a magic bullet with assured outcomes. Consultants say it usually takes greater than a single message or motion for superstar endorsements to maneuver the needle in elections. And youthful individuals might be significantly laborious to sway as a result of they constantly chalk up the bottom turnout charges on the polls. An endorsement would draw consideration, however her followers already lean left.
Alternatively, Biden did beat Trump in 2020. And betting in opposition to the energy of Swifties is often a foul concept.
