As Donald Trump went on and on about the size of the crowds at his rallies and immigrants supposedly eating the pets of the good people of Springfield, Ohio, Kamala Harris looked at her opponent at Tuesday night’s presidential debate with a mix of contempt, pity and disbelief that made me think of Taylor Swift’s song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” in which she coldly dissects a guy whose long deception has finally run dry.
Perhaps Swift saw something of herself, too: Moments after the debate ended, the pop superstar endorsed Harris in a lengthy post on Instagram, where she has more than 283 million followers.
“Like many of you, I watched tonight’s debate,” he wrote, describing his determination to “watch and read everything” he can about the presidential candidates’ “proposed policies and plans for this country.” Harris will get his vote, he added, “because she fights for the rights and causes that I believe need a warrior to defend them.”
Swift's support for Harris was probably inevitable.
In 2018, after years of staying away from politics, she told followers she planned to vote for Democrat Phil Bredesen over Republican Marsha Blackburn in a Tennessee race for the U.S. Senate. And in 2020, she came out in support of Joe Biden in his campaign against then-President Trump, posting a photo of herself holding a tray of Biden-Harris cookies and telling V Magazine, “I think America has a chance to begin the healing process that it so desperately needs.”
But this feels different, especially given how dramatically Swift's celebrity has grown over the past four years.
The blockbuster Eras tour, successful re-recordings of her early work, a Grammy-winning fourth album of the year, a whirlwind romance with NFL great Travis Kelce — it all combines to make Swift arguably the most famous person in the world, with a vast and loyal following filled with young voters coveted by politicians.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, no doubt welcomed the perceived value of Swift’s endorsement: Within minutes of the singer’s Instagram post, the campaign’s official swag store was offering Harris-Walz friendship bracelets modeled after the ones Swifties excitedly trade at Eras tour shows. When Rachel Maddow told him live on MSNBC that Swift had joined them Tuesday night, Walz beamed as if he’d won the lottery.
But it's not just the scale of Swift's success that makes her endorsement stand out this time around; it's also her tone.
In reference to much-discussed comments made by Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, about women who don't have children, Swift signed her note “Childless Cat Lady,” a sort of dismissive gesture we haven't heard from her before on the rare occasions she's spoken out about politics.
The attitude, however, is in keeping with Swift's last album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” particularly on a song like “But Daddy I Love Him,” in which she appears to be poking fun at the contingent of her fan base who disapproved of her alleged pre-Kelce relationship with Matty Healy from 1975 because of offensive jokes he'd made.
Taylor Swift performs at Tokyo Dome in February during her successful Eras tour.
(Toru Hanai/Associated Press)
“God save the most critical idiots who claim to want the best for me,” he sings, “performing sanctimonious soliloquies I’ll never see.”
“But Daddy I Love Him” is a song about pushing beyond the constraints of what people expect of her — actually, violently breaking through those constraints — and it came to mind even before the debate, when Swift was photographed at the U.S. Open in New York hugging her friend Brittany Mahomes after yet another moment of fan outrage related to Mahomes’ apparent endorsement of Trump. (A flowchart might help keep all these alliances and rivalries straight.)
Essentially, Swift's massive fame seems to have given her a sense of immunity from criticism — from trolls on social media, from fans who think they know what's best for her, from the red-state Swifties she's once seemed reluctant to alienate with her more progressive views.
In an amusing twist, a sense of invincibility is also the trait that led Trump to provoke Swift’s potentially damaging endorsement of Harris.
On Instagram, Swift explained that she was motivated to publicly endorse Harris because of Trump's recent deployment of fake artificial intelligence images suggesting she was backing the former president.
“It really brought up my fears around AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “It led me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
In other words, Trump’s confidence that he could get away with using the fake images of Swift — a confidence grounded in everything else he has accomplished in recent years — put him in direct conflict with a person whose arrogance almost certainly outweighs his own.
Think for a second, if you haven't, about the fact that Swift's supportive post included not a photo of Harris, but of Swift herself (holding her cat, no less).
While this had to do with her belief in Harris’s political project, it also had to do with Swift taking control of a threatened personal narrative, as she does throughout “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Do you think Trump listened before messing with the wrong megastar?
