The Trump campaign had a nightmare of a night on Tuesday. The former president floundered during his debate against Kamala Harris, and — to add salt to the wound — another woman Trump loves to hate also made clear she’s giving him no quarter.
Shortly after the debate ended, Taylor Swift announced that she is endorsing Harris in a lengthy Instagram post calling out Trump and his campaign for circulating AI-generated images suggesting she supported the former president.
Trump isn’t happy.
As he tends to do when he’s upset, Trump called into Fox News on Wednesday morning.
“Well, I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better,” Trump said when asked how he was feeling about Swift’s endorsement, referencing the wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Brittany Mahomes, who recently became the center of controversy after liking several pro-Trump comments and posts on social media.
“I was not a Taylor Swift fan,” Trump added. “It was just a question of time. You couldn’t possibly endorse Biden. But she’s a very liberal person, she seems to always endorse a Democrat — and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”
While Trump attempted to shrug off the endorsement, for months now the former president has been fixated on the possibility that the influential superstar would publicly endorse President Joe Biden, and later Harris.
In January, allies close to the former president told Rolling Stone that Trump was planning a “holy war” against Swift should she endorse any of his 2024 rivals, and privately boasted that he was “more popular” than the entertainer. At the time, the singer was at the center of a culture-war firestorm surrounding her relationship with Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce. Prominent allies of the former president went so far as to suggest that the 2023 NFL season had been rigged for the Chiefs to facilitate an endorsement of Biden by Swift.
In the intervening months — which featured Biden dropping out of the race after his own botched debate performance — politicos have waited with bated breath to see if Swift would endorse Harris.
Independent groups of Swifties organized massive digital meetups in support of Harris. Swifties for Kamala has amassed more than 165,000 followers across its social media platforms, and the Harris campaign was more than happy to welcome them into the fold.
By contrast, the Trump campaign has attempted to fake its way into giving the impression that Swift might support him. Last month, the former president shared a collage of AI-generated images purporting to show young women in “Swifties for Trump” shirts.
“I accept!” Trump wrote in the caption. The former president later claimed that he didn’t “know anything about them other than somebody else generated them. I didn’t generate them.”
The incident was apparently the last straw for Swift, who on Tuesday night wrote that she had been “made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift added.
Sorry, Donald, there was a blank space next to Taylor’s endorsement — and she wrote Kamala’s name.
From Rolling Stone US
