‘I hate Taylor Swift!’: Donald Trump is not handling Swift’s Harris endorsement well
Shortly following Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s presidential debate on September 10, 2024, Taylor Swift took to Instagram and announced her support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Swift has 284 million subscribers on Instagram alone, so her endorsement is no small matter. Clearly, Trump isn’t taking the news well. On Sunday, September 15, he took to his social media platform Truth Social and declared, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Trump’s little outburst has widely been met with mockery on social media.
The lead-up to this situation is 100% Trump’s own fault
Unfortunately for Donald Trump, this situation is entirely of his own making. In August, he posted a mix of AI-generated images and real photos to Truth Social, all seeming to indicate that Swift had endorsed him. There are pictures of women in “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts, a reference to a suspected terrorist plot at a Swift concert in Europe, and an AI-generated image of Swift as Uncle Sam telling you to vote for Trump.
“I accept!” Trump wrote above the images.
Turns out, if you make AI images of someone and put words in their mouth, they don’t like it! In her endorsement of Harris and Walz, Swift specifically cited the AI images as one reason she felt she needed to make her vote explicit.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” she wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Trump’s first response to Swift’s endorsement was to claim in a Fox News interview he “like[s] Mrs. Mahomes much better,” referencing the wife of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, with whom Swift is friendly. Later in the week, Trump’s campaign released t-shirts with a design similar enough to Swift’s Eras Tour merch that one wonders if the campaign will have yet another lawsuit on their hands.
Nearly a full week later, Trump is clearly still obsessed with Swift’s rejection. Hence the sudden, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” outburst.
Trump’s wildly immature reaction to Swift’s endorsement of his opponent speaks exactly to why Swift said she’s backing Harris and Walz in the first place. “I’m voting for [Harris] because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
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