<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why is Trump picking a fight he can\u2019t win with Taylor Swift?<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019ve really got bad blood.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s recent\u00a0social media missive, \u201cI HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,\u201d was a stupid escalation in a war that the former president can\u2019t win. To put it simply, he\u00a0needs to calm down.<\/p>\n
Swift is the biggest star in the world, boasting legions of loyal fans. So it\u2019s worth asking: Why would Trump and his minions be so openly hostile to her?<\/p>\n
I have a theory: Trump and his supporters, more so than \u201cnormies,\u201d are keenly aware of Swift\u2019s power because they understand that politics is downstream from culture. Trump understands this, having parlayed his time as a reality TV star all the way to the presidency.<\/p>\n
To be sure, the vast majority of celebrity endorsements don\u2019t amount to a hill of beans. But Swift is no average celeb. She is in a rarefied category, up there with\u00a0Oprah Winfrey\u00a0in her prime.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, Swift has crossover appeal, ranging from her days as a country singer to her current era as a pop diva. And now that football season is back in full swing, anyone watching the NFL (the Chiefs are currently 2-0 and could be headed to another Super Bowl) will be greeted with shots of her arriving at the stadium and closeups of her celebrating every touchdown from a private box.<\/p>\n
To make matters worse for Trump, Swift is all but immune to criticism and threats of boycotts. Young people, especially young women, identify with her on a visceral level in a way that cannot be quantified. If you\u2019re the parent of a Swiftie, good luck telling your child that, for political reasons, they can\u2019t listen to her music or go to her concerts.<\/p>\n
Again, though, few celebrity endorsements matter these days, if they ever did. This is where I think Swift\u2019s superpower as an endorser comes into play.<\/p>\n
Swift\u2019s utility is not to persuade middle-aged adults to switch their votes. Her power lies in the millions of young women who have turned 18 in the four years since the 2020 election. Swift can convince them to register to vote and to vote early.<\/p>\n
(As a macabre thought experiment, imagine how many Trump voters have died since 2020 and how many Swifties have turned 18 since then, and you\u2019ll get the idea.)<\/p>\n
We are already seeing reports that Swift\u2019s endorsement of Vice President Harris\u00a0sent hundreds of thousands of people\u00a0to\u00a0Vote.gov.<\/p>\n
The 2024 election will be likely decided by just tens of thousands of voters in just three to five states. The margins will be very tight, and anything could make the difference between winning and losing.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t know the precise impact that Swift\u2019s endorsement will have in the handful of states that matter. But here\u2019s one data point:\u00a0WiscNews reports\u00a0that, \u201cIn the days following last Tuesday\u2019s presidential debate and Taylor Swift\u2019s endorsement of Kamala Harris, the number of new daily voter registrations in Wisconsin surged, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s recent attack (and I\u2019m willing to bet he could be baited into making more) is yet another way he is alienating potential voters \u2014 and augmenting Democratic voter turnout for a wide range of women, from suburban soccer moms who are already uneasy about Trump to the so-called \u201ccat ladies\u201d that Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen.\u00a0JD Vance\u00a0(R-Ohio), has disparaged.<\/p>\n
Team Harris is already exploiting this opening. Take, for example, Harris\u2019s running mate Gov. Tim Walz\u2019s\u00a0Instagram video\u00a0wherein he mentions Swift, wears a friendship bracelet and references beating \u201cthe smallest man who ever lived\u201d (one of the tracks\u00a0on her last album).<\/p>\n
Walz and Harris are speaking the Swifties\u2019 language, just as Trump seems to be working overtime to alienate them. If Trump were actively trying to offend women, I\u2019m not sure he\u2019d do anything differently.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Trump\u2019s attacks, Swift will no doubt just \u201cshake it off\u201d and declare that haters are gonna hate. Her die-hard fans, on the other hand, might just deliver a payback at the ballot box.<\/p>\n
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books \u201cToo Dumb to Fail\u201d and \u201cFilthy Rich Politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Why is Trump picking a fight he can\u2019t win with Taylor Swift? Now they\u2019ve really got bad blood. Donald Trump\u2019s recent\u00a0social media missive, \u201cI HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,\u201d was … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7970,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968\/revisions\/7970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}