Why justice could be Swift for Trump

It’s easy to dismiss American conspiracy theories, especially those that spring from the loonier fringes of Donald Trump’s base. 

So, when the stories started surfacing about how pop goddess Taylor Swift was plotting to sway the presidential election by backing Biden, we rolled our eyes and moved on.

But this tall tale is different, it has legs as long as Swift’s and this week has made headlines across the world’s serious as well as silly media, from the Washington Post to the South China Morning Post, from the Financial Times to the Guardian.

In a nuttyshell, the MAGA (Make America Great Again) camp is accusing the megastar of faking her relatively recent romantic relationship with Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, who is also apparently part of a ploy by the National Football League to rig the upcoming Super Bowl.

Then, having conquered hearts and minds through association with a sporting triumph – although she already seems popular enough – Swift will take to social media to endorse a Biden second term. 

Along with far-right Fox News commentators and online Trump cheerleaders, the theory is doing the rounds with high-profile Republicans, including the party’s one-time presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” he said on X (formerly Twitter) on 29 January. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Wild indeed but what’s not in doubt is that the MAGA movement is clearly spooked by a potential Swift upset. 

Senior Republicans may not actually believe she is a plant by the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit but, behind the scenes, the matter of Swift’s influence has been discussed with Trump himself, according to a report in Rolling Stone.

If, as expected, November’s contest is a rematch of 2020, polls suggest it will be close, with CNN reporting Trump has a slight edge in the latest survey.

Trump strategists who mock Biden’s perceived frailty and are making it a big focus of their campaign will be horrified if the octogenarian Democrat is reinvigorated by an all-American symbol of youthful zest.

That’s surely putting too much trust in celebrity endorsement, we may scoff, but Swift is no ordinary celeb and her power should not be underestimated.

In the past year, her stardom has reached new heights; she was named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year, and her global Eras tour generated an economy of its own, as well as earning her billions. 

She has 450 million followers on X – her boyfriend has a mere five million – and when she encouraged her 272 million followers on Instagram to register to vote last September, Vote.org reported a 1,226 per cent surge in participation in the hour after the post, with the number of 18-year-olds registered more than double 2022’s figures.

Democrats naturally want to harness her magic. California Governor Gavin Newsom said Swift’s influence would have “a profoundly powerful impact on the 2024 US presidential election”, and he has appealed for her to promote the party. 

Initially reluctant to nail her political colours to the mast, Swift urged her fans to vote Democrat in the 2018 mid-terms and she threw her weight behind Biden in 2020.

She was, she said later, forced “to lean in and educate myself” in reaction to the Trump presidency, and his “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism”. “We will vote you out,” she vowed at the last election and if she makes a stand this year, there is a growing head of steam that says she could swing it for the incumbent.

Polling conducted for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that 18 per cent of voters say they are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by Swift. However, 17 per cent said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate backed by Swift and 55 per cent said that they were neutral and wouldn’t be swayed either way. 

The singer’s clout is particularly huge, 45 per cent, among millennials (those between the ages of 27 and 42), another poll found, while 21 per cent are Gen Z, many of them first time voters in 2024, Euronews reported. No wonder Trump extremists are aiming their venom in her direction, begging Swifties, as fans are known, not to follow her lead.

Trump is apparently bemused that someone is more popular than him but it would be odd, even by the standards of US electorates, if a pop star achieved what charges of sexual assault, multi-million dollar fraud, and inciting insurrection have failed to do so far and killed off his comeback.

From this side of the pond, we can only stand by, awe-struck, and say “go girl”! Biden needs all the help he can get and if it comes in the form of an American icon who fulfilled the dream and then some, that is a more legitimate and wholesome route to the White House than, say, the Russian meddling in Trump’s 2016 victory.

It may be too far-fetched to claim that a politicised Swift could save American democracy, but she could certainly spell trouble (trouble, trouble) for Trump.

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