Donald Trump loves celebrity. It’s a pillar of his whole identity, ever since his days in the New York social scene. Before he ever ran for president (and even longer before Twitter became X), he would tweet relentlessly about celebrity gossip like he was running a personal tabloid.
Throughout all three of his elections, Trump has been particularly obsessed with how celebrities interact with him, often railing against those who most definitively side against him. The ones who support him are given an unprecedented level of access, influence, and VIP treatment. But the ones who remain the most elusive are the ones with an even bigger level of reach, influence, and power than him — and that includes Taylor Swift.
When Swift and Trump were finally in the same place on Sunday night for Super Bowl LIX, people wondered if they would interact. Trump had already shown support to Travis Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs. If they had won, would Swift and Trump appear on the field together? There were no crossed paths in the actual event, but that didn’t stop Trump from still finding a way to troll Swift afterward.
During the game, when Swift was shown on the Jumbotron, the stadium booed her. Trump, however, was met with cheers. Of course he loved this and spent the next day posting about it, sharing side-by-side videos of their differing receptions at Caesars Superdome with no caption. He then re-posted the extreme right-wing account Libs of TikTok, which added the caption, “Trump gets massive cheers at the Super Bowl while Taylor Swift gets booed. The world is healing!”
There’s a long history here. While Swift notoriously stayed out of the 2016 election cycle, she’s made it clear in both 2020 and 2024 that she votes blue. Her initial silence may have led Trump to falsely believe he had an ally in one of the best-selling recording artists of all time: When she endorsed a Democrat in the Tennessee Senate race in 2018, he told reporters that he liked her music “25 percent less.” (In response, Swift gave a store-wide 25 percent discount to her merch.)
Swift’s disinterest in MAGA still seemed to get under Trump’s skin in 2024, when he posted on Truth Social that “there’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden.” He couldn’t stop talking about her, complimenting her appearance, and her boyfriend Travis Kelce. He went so far as to post a fake, AI-generated photo of Swift dressed as Uncle Sam and endorsing him. When she gave an emphatic endorsement of Kamala Harris on social media, Trump took to Truth Social again with his own emphatic “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”
Since winning the election, he and his own stans have been more smug than usual, perhaps because supporting him and his racist, transphobic, and misogynistic policies has become more normalized in pop culture, especially by younger influencers. When Selena Gomez shared a raw video of herself crying over recent immigration crackdowns, the White House’s press secretary shared a response video directed at Gomez featuring the mothers of people who were allegedly killed by undocumented immigrant workers.
Trump’s latest Swift attack was a victory lap for the MAGA agenda, as the one person he wants on his side the most was apparently rebuffed so publicly and right in front of him. And it likely won’t be the last time he shows off his not-so-secret obsession with her. Trump will find more reasons to use Swift’s name to fuel the anger or bragging rights of his followers, who seem to be motivated largely by both of those things.
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