Fox News to Taylor Swift: ‘Don’t Get Involved in Politics!’

Taylor Swift has not uttered a word about the 2024 presidential election. But the mere prospect that the pop superstar could endorse President Biden has sent conservatives on Fox News into conniptions.

“Why would someone as popular as she is alienate your fans, the Swifties?” Jeanine Pirro said on “The Five,” before addressing the singer directly. “So don’t get involved! Don’t get involved in politics! We don’t want to see you there!”

“Please don’t believe everything Taylor Swift says,” urged one commentator, Charly Arnolt. “We’re all begging you.”

And Sean Hannity, using his prime-time soapbox on Tuesday evening, suggested that Democrats were leading Ms. Swift astray. “Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Mr. Hannity added, “she wants to think twice before making a decision about 2024.”

Such unsolicited advice for Ms. Swift popped up on Fox News this week as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump have adopted an increasingly conspiratorial worldview about Ms. Swift’s prospective involvement in the presidential race.

Right-wing activists have indulged in baseless speculation that Ms. Swift’s romance with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — a kind of ur-American couple of football star and wholesome pop icon — is a contrivance engineered by Democrats, or perhaps the National Football League, to trick unsuspecting Americans into boosting Super Bowl ratings or voting for Mr. Biden in November.

A version of that theory aired on Fox News in mid-January when the host Jesse Watters floated the idea that Ms. Swift was a government ᴀsset engaged in psychological warfare. He suggested that the runaway success of her Eras concert tour was aided by the Defense Department. “Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” Mr. Watters asked viewers. (He allowed that he had no solid evidence: “If we did, we’d share it.”)

Mr. Kelce has also come in for mockery, with Mr. Watters calling him “sponsored by Pfizer” because Mr. Kelce recorded advertisements to promote Pfizer’s Covid vaccine.

This week’s comments by Mr. Hannity, Ms. Pirro and others, however, were geared more toward dissuading Ms. Swift, who commands 279 million followers on Instagram, from throwing her cultural weight behind a political candidate they dislike. Their on-air discussions were prompted in part by reports that the Biden campaign had deemed Ms. Swift, who endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, a dream advocate for the president.