January 31, 2024 01:34 PM UTC

The Madness of Waging "Holy War" on Taylor Swift

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• by: Colorado Pols

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.

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.

TNR:

Since the Chiefs’ victory Sunday night, other right-wing accounts have also accused Swift of being an “op.” Far-right activist Jack Lombardi insisted Swift and Kelce would use the extra media attention to endorse Biden, while conservative podcast host Mike Crispi claimed they would announce their endorsement during the half-time show.

Georgia GOP district chair Kandiss Taylor said Swift uses “witchcraft” that is “demonic, evil, and Luciferian.” Meanwhile, in its rush to bash Swift, Fox News pulled a 180 on acknowledging climate change is real, and accused Swift of making things worse with her private jet travel to the game…

MAGA influencer and plagiarist extraordinaire Benny Johnson has got it all figured out, you see:

By now, everyone knows Taylor Swift is a government psyop and this is exactly why Corporate Media is having a meltdown about it:

-4 years ago, the Pentagon Psychological Operations Unit pitched NATO about turning Taylor Swift into a “social influence” asset
-In 2019, George Soros bought her entire music catalog
-In 2020, she came out as a raging liberal Joe Biden supporter, after previously being politically neutral
-In 2023, her Eras Tour raked in higher revenue than the GDP of 50 countries
-In 2023, she helped register over 35k new voters with a single Instagram post
-And now she’s dating a Pfizer & Bud Light agent in the NFL, the most watched live sport in America
-Even the NYT wrote a story on how Biden is courting her for an endorsement and how he wants to appear on stage with her

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to put it all together, you just have to be paying attention

And as CNN reports, don’t even get Lauren Boebert’s frenemy Laura Loomer started:

“The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open,” added Laura Loomer, a self-described Islamophobe who has been embraced and promoted by Trump. “It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.”

If and when Swift does voice an opinion on the 2024 presidential race, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a pop star has done so. Singer Katy Perry famously wore a dress emblazoned with Barack Obama’s campaign logo in 2008 and 2012 at campaign events, and we don’t recall at that time Perry’s support for Obama eliciting the same outrage in response. The difference between then and now could be attributable to Swift’s ginormous popularity, which wasn’t fully understood prior to last year’s tour…or it’s another sign of how today’s Republican Party has fallen out of the mainstream of society from pop stars to football.

Either way, we don’t see how declaring a “holy war” on Taylor Swift helps Donald Trump retake the White House. Swift’s appeal transcends political boundaries as much or more than any other public figure in the entire world today, and her massive fan base of registered–and registerable–voters is a sleeping giant we would never poke intentionally. Far better to downplay this undeniable asset to your opponent and move on. There’s just no way that actively vilifying Taylor Swift earns Republicans more support than they’ll lose.

But as with all things Trump, this is a lesson that will have to be learned the hard way.