After Trump claimed fake Taylor Swift endorsement, her fans make…see more

Nine days after former President Donald Trump falsely claimed to accept an endorsement from pop superstar Taylor Swift, thousands of Swift fans, including some high-profile cultural and political figures, gathered on a video call with the goal of ensuring his defeat.

They shared their favorite Swift songs. They quoted their favorite Swift lines. And then they assailed Trump’s political agenda as a threat to women.

One fan, singer Carole King, sang Swift’s song “Shake It Off.” Another, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., described Trump as a bully who was “trying to claw us back into the dark days.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who attended two concerts on Swift’s Eras Tour, made a series of jokes at Trump’s expense that played on the singer’s lyrics.

They all were gathered Tuesday under the banner of Swifties for Kamala, a group that is not officially affiliated with Vice President Kamala Harris or Swift — who has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the election — but that is seeking to deploy the intensity of Swift’s vast fan base in support of Harris’ bid for the White House.

“For me, Kamala is really a relaxing thought,” Emerald Medrano, 22, a founder of the group, said on the call, alluding to the singer’s lyrics in the song “Karma.”

The early returns from the group’s organizing call Tuesday — which lasted two hours and was joined by about 34,000 people across Zoom, YouTube and TikTok — have been promising, the group said Friday: $130,000 raised for the Harris campaign over four days. But organizers hope the effort will have a potentially more powerful effect, reminding young people in swing states to register to vote.

“Swifties just never do anything small,” Irene Kim, 29, another founder of the group, said in an interview Friday.

The Trump campaign responded by asserting that it was the true campaign for Swifties.

“As Kamala Harris continues to lie about her values and policies, voters will realize they knew she was trouble when she walked in,” a spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, said in a statement that lifted lyrics from Swift’s songs “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “Bad Blood.” “Americans have bad blood with Kamala Harris’ radical agenda, and that is why Swifties for Trump is a movement that grows bigger every single day.”

It is not clear that there is any organized Swifties for Trump group, though Trump has shared what appear to be AI-generated images of women wearing T-shirts with that label.

Swift holds huge sway on social media, logging more than 280 million followers on Instagram. Many of those fans carefully dissect each of her public statements, and she is viewed as a rare celebrity whose endorsement might move a significant number of voters to the polls.

She endorsed Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 election and is not seen as likely to support Trump, whom she accused in 2020 of inflaming racial tensions in the United States.

That has seemed to frustrate Trump. He was said to have complained to Republican House members in Washington this year that Swift would again endorse Biden, who was running for reelection at the time.

And Aug. 18, Trump generated a swell of headlines when he shared images on his Truth Social platform that falsely implied he had been endorsed by Swift. One of the images, apparently created through artificial intelligence, depicts a likeness of Swift dressed up as Uncle Sam, with an American flag behind her.

The image features white lettering that reads, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” “I accept!” Trump wrote in the post. The post also included depictions of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.

Trump later told Fox Business that he did not know “anything” about the images “other than somebody else generated them.” He rejected a suggestion that Swift might sue him over the post, observing that others had shared images of him that were generated by artificial intelligence.