Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
Taylor Swift never trusts a narcissist — but they love her. This may explain why Donald Trump still seems desperate to win Swift over, though she has made it pretty clear that she strongly dislikes him and his policies. Also, Swift has a legion of devoted fans, and with Trump’s poll numbers slipping now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee, a Swift endorsement must look more enticing than ever.
Swift has yet to weigh in on the 2024 presidential race, but it appears that Trump was duped into thinking he’d gotten her coveted endorsement. On Sunday he posted a collage of four images to Truth Social with the caption “I accept!”
While that phrasing seems to suggest Trump thought he was accepting the pop star’s endorsement, it’s possible he meant he was embracing the support of her fans. But that is also fake news. Are there people who are fans of both Trump and Swift? Sure. But unlike the Swifties4Kamala coalition — which has well over 100,000 followers across various social-media channels — there is no large, organized movement of Swifties going MAGA.
This should have been obvious to Trump from the images he posted. The news report with a headline about “SWIFTIES TURNING TO TRUMP” after a failed terror plot forced the cancellation of her Vienna shows is not real; the headline is clearly labeled “satire.”
The other three images — which are all screenshots from the pro-Trump X account @akafacehots — aren’t quite what they they seem either. The image of Swift dressed as Uncle Sam is A.I. generated, and she has never urged anyone to vote for Trump. The photo of the woman in a red shirt also appears to be an A.I. creation, and the caption “SwiftiesForTrump continue to break the internet! Kamalas campaign is in shambles over it!” is false.
Only the photo in the upper right, showing a woman wearing a homemade white “Swifties for Trump” shirt, is real. Jenna Piwowarczyk, 19, confirmed to the Independent that she’s a Trump-loving Swiftie. She shared another photo of herself wearing the shirt while meeting Trump at a June rally in Racine, Wisconsin, in June with the outlet. Piwowarczyk said that when Trump saw her Swift shirt, he commented “she is great.”
A few hours after posting the largely fake photo collage, Trump shared a video in which a woman claims that Swifties are “rallying for Trump” en masse. She claims that following the foiled concert attack, “A lot of them are just saying, you know, if Trump was in office this would’ve never, ever happened. She would be safe. There wouldn’t be terrorism or wars going on. Because we had world peace before and he’ll do it again.”
Trump’s Truth Social post has no attribution. It was originally posted by conservative content creator Kandis Esposito on TikTok:
Without even getting into Esposito’s dubious claims about Trump’s ability to stop all terrorism, there is no evidence that massive numbers of Swifties suddenly embraced the Republican candidate this month.
Trump really shouldn’t trust any Swift-endorsement news unless he sees it posted by her official X account. That’s the one where Swift endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 and called Trump out for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism.”
