After Trump claimed fake Taylor Swift endorsement, her fans make real push for Harris

Nine days after former President Donald Trump falsely claimed to accept an endorsement from pop superstar Taylor Swift, thousands of Swift fans, including some high-profile cultural and political figures, gathered on a video call with the goal of ensuring his defeat.

They shared their favorite Swift songs. They quoted their favorite Swift lines. And then they assailed Trump’s political agenda as a threat to women.

One fan, singer Carole King, sang Swift’s song “Shake It Off.” Another, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., described Trump as a bully who was “trying to claw us back into the dark days.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who attended two concerts on Swift’s Eras Tour, made a series of jokes at Trump’s expense that played on the singer’s lyrics.

They all were gathered Tuesday under the banner of Swifties for Kamala, a group that is not officially affiliated with Vice President Kamala Harris or Swift — who has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the election — but that is seeking to deploy the intensity of Swift’s vast fan base in support of Harris’ bid for the White House.

“For me, Kamala is really a relaxing thought,” Emerald Medrano, 22, a founder of the group, said on the call, alluding to the singer’s lyrics in the song “Karma.”

The early returns from the group’s organizing call Tuesday — which lasted two hours and was joined by about 34,000 people across Zoom, YouTube and TikTok — have been promising, the group said Friday: $130,000 raised for the Harris campaign over four days. But organizers hope the effort will have a potentially more powerful effect, reminding young people in swing states to register to vote.

“Swifties just never do anything small,” Irene Kim, 29, another founder of the group, said in an interview Friday.

The Trump campaign responded by asserting that it was the true campaign for Swifties.

“As Kamala Harris continues to lie about her values and policies, voters will realize they knew she was trouble when she walked in,” a spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, said in a statement that lifted lyrics from Swift’s songs “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “Bad Blood.” “Americans have bad blood with Kamala Harris’ radical agenda, and that is why Swifties for Trump is a movement that grows bigger every single day.”

It is not clear that there is any organized Swifties for Trump group, though Trump has shared what appear to be AI-generated images of women wearing T-shirts with that label.

Swift holds huge sway on social media, logging more than 280 million followers on Instagram. Many of those fans carefully dissect each of her public statements, and she is viewed as a rare celebrity whose endorsement might move a significant number of voters to the polls.

She endorsed Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 election and is not seen as likely to support Trump, whom she accused in 2020 of inflaming racial tensions in the United States.

That has seemed to frustrate Trump. He was said to have complained to Republican House members in Washington this year that Swift would again endorse Biden, who was running for reelection at the time.

And Aug. 18, Trump generated a swell of headlines when he shared images on his Truth Social platform that falsely implied he had been endorsed by Swift. One of the images, apparently created through artificial intelligence, depicts a likeness of Swift dressed up as Uncle Sam, with an American flag behind her.

The image features white lettering that reads, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” “I accept!” Trump wrote in the post. The post also included depictions of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.

Trump later told Fox Business that he did not know “anything” about the images “other than somebody else generated them.” He rejected a suggestion that Swift might sue him over the post, observing that others had shared images of him that were generated by artificial intelligence.

“AI is always very dangerous in that way,” he mused.

Swift has not reacted publicly to the post, and her representative did not reply to requests for comment. But some of her prominent Democratic supporters have bristled at the suggestion that Trump was the candidate of the Swifties.

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., who joined the Swifties for Kamala call, described Trump’s post as “outrageous” and disrespectful. Gillibrand called it “ridiculous.”

“It’s just another of the many lies that Donald Trump has been telling the American people,” Gillibrand said in an interview, adding, “I think there will be very few Swifties who support Donald Trump.”

Gillibrand said she sees a natural alliance between Harris and Swift, and suggested that Swift was likely to be offended by disparaging remarks that Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, once made about “childless cat ladies.” Swift, who does not have children, refers to her cats in her music and once appeared on the cover of Time magazine with one of them wrapped around her shoulders.

In 2020, Swift told V Magazine, a fashion publication, that she was backing Biden because the country needed to elect a president who understood “that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose what happens to their bodies and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included.”

Kim, one of the Swifties for Kamala founders, said she was confident that Swift would endorse Harris “when the time is right.” In the meantime, Kim added, her group “doesn’t need AI photos to prove our endorsement.”

Swift has offered signals that she may publicly weigh in on the election. In an Instagram story in March, she urged her followers to vote in the presidential primary races on Super Tuesday, but she did not endorse a candidate.

“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” she wrote. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”

Swift completed the European leg of her enormously successful Eras Tour with a sold-out show in London this month. Her performances in the city were attended by about half a million people over five nights. She is scheduled to continue the tour in Miami in mid-October, 18 days before Election Day.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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