After wrapping up a strange and wild-eyed debate performance, former President Donald Trump took another devastating hit barely 30 minutes later as Taylor Swift officially endorsed Kamala Harris. Not only that, but the pop superstar urged her Swifties to register to vote, essentially activating her notoriously massive fanbase and sending them to the polls. While Swift’s endorsement shouldn’t come as a total surprise given she endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 election, it’s not what Trump needed at the moment. His campaign’s response didn’t help the situation either.
The morning after Swift’s endorsement, Trump’s campaign made a desperate attempt on X, formerly Twitter, to keep Swifties in the fold by selling “Trump Era” t-shirts. Needless to say, the blatant rip-off of Swift’s Eras Tour merch was quickly blasted in the comments.
🚨NEW MERCH🚨
Calling all Swifties for Trump
Get your Trump Era shirt today 👉https://t.co/HkA7LwHhIC pic.twitter.com/gqqITeCOFb
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) September 12, 2024
“Yall are so cringe, and not in a good way,” one X user wrote. “Dude, she doesn’t like you, this is embarrassing,” another posted. “You guys are in your continuously getting sued era,” a user quipped. A sizable number of comments also tagged Swift and her publicist Tree Paine, who were no doubt aware of Trump’s latest stunt. You’d think the former president’s campaign would have tread more carefully given Swift’s endorsement specifically called out his social media activity.
Trump shared AI images of the wrong cat lady
Donald Trump has a well-documented history of saying weird things about Taylor Swift, but he reached a disturbing new low on August 18, 2024 when he shared AI images of the pop superstar endorsing him, which is obviously not the case. For the record, neither Trump nor his campaign made the images. According to The Guardian, the AI images were created by another user on Truth Social. However, the former president did blast them to his legion of followers on the platform that he also happens to own.
Swift remained oddly silent about the AI imagery in the weeks after. That changed when she dropped her September 10th endorsement of Kamala Harris following the vice president’s first debate with Trump. Clearly, Swift saw the images and did not take the situation lightly. In fact, she cited Trump’s AI use as the main reason for publicly backing Harris. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “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.”
Of course, Swift also took a cheeky swipe at Trump’s running mate JD Vance by signing her post as “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” Vance has been under fire for his 2021 remarks to Tucker Carlson where he referred to Democratic women as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” Swift clearly caught that scandal, too.
