Donald Trump had pop star Taylor Swift on his mind Thursday during his closed-door meeting with Republicans on Capitol Hill. CNN correspondent Melanie Zanona reports that among Trump’s many meandering statements to lawmakers, he blabbered about the singer/songwriter’s apparent Democratic leanings.
“Why would she endorse this dope?” Trump reportedly asked. “He doesn’t know how to get off a stage.” Swift has made no endorsements in the 2024 campaign, but she did endorse President Joe Biden in 2020.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency,” Swift tweeted in May of that year, “you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.@realdonaldtrump”
Swift added to that sentiment in August 2020.
“Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely,” she tweeted. “Request a ballot early. Vote early.”
Now that’s some bad blood.
The megastar has clearly been living rent-free in Trump’s head for more than a fortnight. On Monday, Variety published excerpts from a new book about Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” in which he shared his thoughts about her.
“I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful,” he said. But he apparently fretted about her politics.
“I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump.”
Trump asked the interviewer if Swift is “legitimately liberal” or whether it’s “just an act.” (It’s not.)
“It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal,” he said.
Last year, Swift launched a campaign asking her fans to register to vote. The success of her campaign—Vote.org said its site “was averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes”—led to the fragile right-wing-o-sphere spending months attacking her. Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested that Swift was a psy-op campaign by government intelligence agencies to manipulate our country’s elections. The baseless conspiracy theories got so out of hand that the Pentagon put out an official (if tongue-in-cheek) statement on the matter.
Whether or not Swift will publicly weigh in on the 2024 election remains to be seen. But if she does, you can bet Trump won’t just shake it off.
Hopium Chronicles’ Simon Rosenberg joins Markos to discuss the “red wave-ification” of the economy and how prepared Democrats are for November. There is still work to do but we have a better candidate—and we have the edge.
