Taylor Swift performs during The Eras Tour at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood Monday, Aug. 7, 2023. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Allen J. Schaben | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Taylor Swift endorsed President Joe Biden’s winning 2020 campaign — and while she hasn’t backed Biden’s reelection bid yet, allies of former President Donald Trump are already getting ready for it.
Swift, the pop-music megastar so influential that her latest tour is having a tangible impact on the U.S. economy, is increasingly the target of criticism and conspiracy theories from Trump’s allies.
Those attacks have ramped up ahead of the Super Bowl, which Swift is expected to try to attend to cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican former presidential candidate who has endorsed Trump, wondered aloud on X, formerly Twitter, whether an “artificially culturally propped-up couple” would endorse Biden after the Super Bowl.
Ramaswamy even suggested that the Super Bowl outcome itself would be manipulated as part of an effort to boost Biden, though he added it was “just some wild speculation.”
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba, who represents the former president in a federal civil defamation case where a jury last week ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages, on Monday reposted a message that compares her favorably to Swift.
“Who thinks this country needs a lot more women like Alina Habba, and a lot less like Taylor Swift?” read the social media post, which Habba shared on her Instagram Story.
Earlier this month, Fox News host Jesse Watters floated the idea that Swift was some sort of political asset for the Pentagon.
Swift was already a mega-celebrity when she endorsed Biden in 2020. But in the years since then, she has attained a level of fame and cultural significance that places her closer to a folk hero than a pop singer.
Ticket sales for her concerts have not only shattered records but crashed Ticketmaster’s website and spurred a backlash over outlandish ticket prices, a fiasco that prompted Congress to get involved.
Her appearances at pro football games after she began dating Kelce have consumed coverage of the sporting events and massively boosted ratings.
Her power also extends to politics: An Instagram post in September, encouraging her 279 million followers to vote, directed a wave of tens of thousands of new registrations to the website Vote.org.
So it’s no surprise that Swift’s endorsement is reportedly the biggest prize the Biden campaign is seeking, as the Democratic incumbent gears up for a rematch of the 2020 race against Trump.
A Biden campaign spokesman and a representative for Swift did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Rolling Stone reported earlier Tuesday that Trump has been in discussions with Republican and conservative media figures in recent months about the prospect of Swift endorsing Biden.
While the Trump campaign did not confirm those discussions on the record, they are clearly thinking about Swift in the context of November’s election.
“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,” campaign spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement to CNBC.
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