Right-wing media is burning red at Taylor Swift.
The attacks on Swift have been steadily building for weeks (see Fox News host Jesse Watters asking on his prime time program earlier this month if Swift is a “Pentagon asset,” for example), but it reached a fever pitch on Monday.
The bad blood is related to Swift’s 2020 endorsement of President Joe Biden and the fact that Travis Kelce, the Chiefs tight end whom she is dating, participated in an advertising campaign for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. A Monday story published by The New York Times, which noted Biden would like Swift’s endorsement again this year, added fuel to the fire.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the unsuccessful 2024 presidential candidate who has spread conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection and the legitimacy of the 2020 election, posted Monday on X.
“And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
Ramaswamy was responding to a post from Jack Posobiec, the far-right conspiracy theorist, who shared a version of the theory during an interview with Roseanne Barr, the famous actress who in recent years has descended into the far-right online fever swamp. Posobiec said he believes the Democratic Party and other powers are “gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against” Donald Trump. Barr agreed, saying that Swift is “definitely somebody who has consented to speak the way the establishment wants to be spoken of” and that using her influence will be how they “try to get on top of the next election.”
