Why do so many Americans believe the Taylor Swift and Joe Biden conspiracy?
2024-02-16 00:33:55
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
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Conspiracy theories are just part of American political life. They are now, and they always have been. But who among us predicted a conspiracy theory involving Joe Biden, Taylor Swift, and the Super Bowl?
He can't name a Taylor Swift song, Taylor Swift can't name a Biden policy. This relationship was engineered in a lab. And Taylor's boyfriend sponsored by Pfizer. It is a match made in corporate heaven. Could you imagine if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl?
Why do nearly 20% of Americans believe Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to help Joe Biden win re-election in November? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly American.
I mean, first off, it's horrific, and my heart goes out to the people of Kansas City.
This is Nikki McCann Ramirez, politics reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. She and I spoke on Thursday, the night before that, news had come through, of a mass shooting in Missouri, as thousands of fans gathered for the Super Bowl victory party for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Today's parade was wrapping up when gunfire came out of nowhere. And here's what we know right now. One person died in the gunfire. Twenty-one others were shot, many of them in critical condition. tonight.
Nine of the shooting victims were children. It's incredibly awful. And I think it speaks to the reality that Americans don't feel safe. They don't feel safe in their schools, at their grocery stores. They should be able to go out and celebrate their victories and achievements alongside the community without the fear of being shot.
And I think Americans have been sold this idea that mass shooting deaths are simply the sunk cost of protecting their civil rights. And with every mass shooting, I think more people become unwilling to accept that they, their families, their loved ones, are that potential price of protecting. the Second Amendment. You know, our politicians will someday have to answer for it. As I'm sure you know, the World Cup is coming to the United States in 2026.
And the shooting took place at a celebratory parade for one of the biggest sporting events in the world, the Super Bowl. How do you reassure millions of international fans that they can feel safe at sporting events when you can't even protect your own citizens? I think the question of mass shootings in the United States is something that goes so far beyond the communities. it's directly affecting. It's affecting every American and it's affecting the perception of the United States throughout the world.
And I just think it's awful to witness something that should have been a celebration of a monumental achievement turn into a tragedy in a matter of seconds.
We're recording this on a Thursday, so by the time listeners hear this, we might know more. But as you and I speak now, we know that one person has died, more than 20 others, including children, are injured, and police have made three arrests over the incident. The Kansas City police chief said on Thursday that it seems like this was a personal disagreement that got out of hand. Whatever the motive, it has inevitably reignited the whole question of gun safety, gun control, law, legislation and whether there needs to be stricter rules on this. Joe Biden was very quick to call for tighter laws in a statement he released on Wednesday evening.
Do you detect any sign at all that this shooting in Missouri could be the one that moves things politically, that politically moves the dial?
I hate to say it, but no. And I think it's been said before, but after the Sandy Hook shooting, when very young children were killed by a gunman, if they couldn't find the will within themselves to make the necessary changes to protect the American public, that, I think, was the moment where a lot of people resigned themselves, that this was going to be the status quo for a very long time. The only thing that gives me hope, and it's a very morbid hope, is that these shootings are so common that their aftermath is now infecting every single part of society. We've seen now that this happened at an NFL event, a lot of athletes come out and call for gun reform. You know, you kind of have to hold on to that feeling that at a certain point, the citizenry's demands for change will outweigh the influence of the gun lobby and Republican politicians, that they'll have no option.
But I don't think today is going to be the day, and it's an incredibly upsetting notion to have to live with as a country.
And I'm sure that we'll hear more of that debate and also more about what happened in Missouri in the coming days. But we should get to the reason we wanted so much to talk to you this week, and it's because I mentioned at the top of the podcast, every now and again, a number is so eye-catching it just leaps out at you, and this is one of those. It was published from an opinion poll and it came out on Wednesday. Monmouth University polling found that 18% of respondents, that's very nearly one in five, said they believe that Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to help Joe Biden win re-election in November, while 46%, that's nearly half, said they had at least heard about it. At nearly three quarters, 71% of those who said they believed in the conspiracy also identified with or leaned towards the Republican Party, and even higher number, 83% said they would support Donald Trump in November.
So, you have one in five, largely Republicans or Trump-supporting folk, who believe that there is a conspiracy in which Taylor Swift is involved to help Joe Biden become president. As I say, it leapt out at me. I'm guessing, because of what you've written about, you weren't quite as shocked as I was by this, Nikki.
I'm not shocked. I've been covering right-wing misinformation and disinformation for a very long time. And from the pandemic through the 2020 election to today, particularly among the right, there has been a marked increase in conspiratorial thinking as the default reaction to major public events. And, as you said earlier, we still don't have a lot of details about the shooting that took place in Kansas City, but I can already say that there are individuals online, far-right actors describing the shooting as a false flag. And it just goes to show that these days in the United States, there is rarely an event that captures the public interest that does not have some sort of conspiratorial chatter barnacling itself to it.
And so this is just yet another example of that habit of mind that you're describing. But let's just try and get to the bottom of this very particular conspiracy, because, you know, it's unlikely. the cast of characters is at least unlikely. Just go spooling back before 2018.. One of the things that was known about Taylor Swift was that she had actively made a choice to stay out of politics, that she was one of these people who was sort of, above and outside politics, quite consensual figure.
What changed?
Yeah, I think it was a combination of things. As you said, before 2018, Taylor was really guarded about her personal politics. Her talent was so obvious, her parents moved the family to Nashville when Taylor was only 14.. Her first album established her as a country music star. The latest, 1989,, crosses over into pop, cementing her world domination.
She made her debut as an entertainer, as a country music singer, and country tends to be one of the sort of more conservative enclaves in the American entertainment industry. And she said that she was advised early in her career simply not to engage in politics because it would alienate a large portion of her fan base. And I think what happened with Taylor was that that silence, that choice to not really vocalize her political leanings, allowed Republicans to attempt to project their own views onto her. Obviously, she's a blonde, blue-eyed, conventionally attractive music star with a very wholesome image. Many Republicans took her silence as a tacit agreement with them.
There was even notable instances of neo-Nazis propping her up as a quote-unquote Aryan goddess, as the sort of standard of what white womanhood was supposed to look like. And to be clear, Taylor never endorsed any of this. In 2018, she came out and endorsed two Tennessee Democrats. She's lived in Tennessee for a really long time.
She announced in an Instagram post that she will vote for former Governor Phil Bredson for the Senate and Congressman Jim Cooper for the House. Now, Swift expressed strong opposition to the Republican Senate candidate, Marsha Blackburn, who is also running in November.
The backlash from the right was immediate. They began slut-shaming her. They did something very similar to what they did to LeBron James when they told him to shut up and dribble when he wrote about politics. But with Taylor, it was shut up and stick to music. Shut up and sing.
I think she should just stick to her singing and let her love life be what it is.
A new poll shows 18% of voters are likely to vote for whichever candidate Taylor Swift endorses. Uh-oh. And from that point onward, as Taylor became a bit more vocal and publicly declared herself as pro-feminist, pro-choice, did things like help register voters. More than 35,000 new voters have been registered after Swift encouraged her followers to sign up on National Voter Registration Day, September 19th. This resentment from the right grew.
I've had it up to here. She's a good songwriter and a good singer. She's not Jesus. We're in a moment when conservatives are trying to build cultural capital. They are trying to build themselves up as forces within American entertainment and film and the culture at large.
And, as you know, as your listeners know, Taylor Swift has an immense amount of cultural capital. She is at a new summit in a career that people thought had already reached multiple peaks. It feels like every time we think, wow, it can't get better for her than it is right now, it does get better for her. And this is going to be an extremely consequential election in November. And I think Republicans have a lot of fear of what the cultural capital that Taylor Swift and people like her have can do in terms of endorsements and political support.
The New York Times says the centerpiece of the Biden re-election strategy is begging Taylor Swift for an endorsement. She shouldn't be liberal. She should be a total conservative, given what, given everything. She's been on social media a lot. Now you're thinking, OK, so we all have to register to vote.
We're all suddenly Democrats.
Don't get involved in politics.
We don't want to see you there. Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess?
Yeah, because often it was said that actually Hollywood endorsements didn't really help those being endorsed. And I think that's partly because so many were just broadly liberal and Democrats. It didn't make much difference. The thing about her that I think is so interesting is that she didn't just voice a particularly broadly, generically liberal outlook. She went really specific in 2020, around the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
Hard to remember now, and sort of extraordinary that Donald Trump famously said, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. That provoked Taylor Swift to respond. then, on Twitter. She tweeted, after stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism, your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence. We will vote you out in November.
She tweeted. I mean, in that sort of moment. since then, really, Nikki, it's been a kind of state of war between her and the MAGA movement, Trump and the right.
Oh, absolutely. It's been a fire that has been long stoked. And I think in 2020, like a lot of things that broke in American politics, the relationship between the MAGA right and Taylor Swift fundamentally fractured permanently in that moment. And I also think that gave Taylor a bit more freedom to be more vocal about her politics. She'd been slowly ramping up in terms of crafting her political stances and where she would place herself in the American spectrum of politics.
And I think that moment for a lot of people was make or break. And since then, Taylor really has no charity within the farthest right wing factions of republicanism and conservatism in the United States. I think, for a lot of the right, which has so tied its trajectory to Donald Trump, a rejection of Donald Trump is fundamentally seen as a rejection of right wing and conservative values. And I think it just became clear to Taylor that if she was going to make all of these moves to advance the culture, especially for women within the entertainment industry, that she couldn't remain silent about her politics at a time when there were so many attacks on women and minorities coming from the right.
Just on the point about women's rights, is it abortion rights and the Trump appointed majority on the Supreme Court and its decision to overturn the constitutional protection of abortion rights in Roe v. Wade? Is that the sort of center of her political outlook, if you like? Is that what is animating her decision, certainly to be against him and perhaps to endorse Joe Biden come the autumn?
You know, I don't think it's necessarily clear. I do know that she came out after, over the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She came out against that. Superstar Taylor Swift took to Twitter, reposting a statement from Michelle Obama and then writing, quote, I'm absolutely terrified that this is where we are, that after so many decades of people fighting for women's rights to their own bodies, today's decision has stripped us of that.
But I think fundamentally the attacks against Taylor Swift aren't from the right, aren't necessarily centered around a specific political stance that she has, but rather the overall image she presents. If you look at the conversation from the right online about Taylor, most of it centers around the fact that she's a woman in her 30s who is not married and does not have children. Even just the fact that she has pursued this phenomenal career and then later on declared herself a feminist and sort of leaned into her politics, the conflagration of that represents to them a woman who has rejected the image of womanhood that conservatives and Republicans are trying to market out to society. The idea that women are intended to be homemakers and child bearers. And it's actually, it's incredibly disturbing to read, because you can go into the comments of any Taylor Swift post and they will be accusing her of, you know, being like a childless boozer who promotes the abuse of alcohol because she was spotted chugging a beer at a football game.
Something that has never, that no one, no one, has ever chugged a beer at a football game. It's completely unthinkable.
Yeah. No, that happened again, didn't it? With the Superbowl, these images of her having a drink while watching her boyfriend have a starring role in that important game. Let's get onto that, because obviously that's a big part of it. There she is, this enormously successful woman, the first woman with four albums in the Billboard chart, top 10, most number one albums by any woman in history, huge, huge figure in the culture.
And then she starts dating a man with a huge place in sporting culture, himself, Travis Kelsey of the Kansas City Chiefs. Why does this relationship drive the right crazy?
Oh, my gosh.
I think it really gets into how the NFL is viewed within the United States. From Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for Superbowl 58, opening night! The sport of football, American football, is sort of the embodiment of ritualized male aggression. You know, the tackling, the sideline, like outbursts. The spectacle around the NFL is typically very pro-American, pro-patriotism, pro-military.
The beer, the dudes with their shirt off, it's dude world. And obviously a lot of women love the NFL, which they have every right to. And I think the NFL is really trying to bring more women as viewers into the sport. And I think they see Taylor as an opportunity to help with that. One marketing group, in fact, that follows this sort of thing estimates that the Chiefs and the NFL have added more than $330 million of what's known as brand value.
I think that's a good thing since Swift started going to NFL football games. But I think where this conspiracy theory begins is as a twisted response to the, in my opinion, completely misplaced belief that in dating Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift sort of violated this unspoken line of demarcation between her realm and quote-unquote our realm. And that the only reason she could have done that, the only reason she could have had to date another prominent American celebrity was because of some nefarious force or plot, not because she's in love and enjoying the time she's having with Travis Kelce.
And people who believe in the plot, what do they think the plot is exactly? Just give us that, before we get into talking about Travis, a bit more.
There's multiple versions. Fundamentally, it boils down to this idea that Taylor Swift's relationship with Travis Kelce is a manufactured ploy to facilitate her endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 election. And there's different versions of it. There's the idea that the relationship is fake, that it's all for PR, the idea that Travis isn't really even a part of it, that Taylor Swift's sort of ubiquitousness in the culture right now is being artificially inflated by unseen forces in order to make her so popular that when she endorses Biden, it'll swing the election. I like her music, she's all right.
But I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this? Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon Psychological Operations Unit floated, turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A PSYOP for combating online misinformation. There is also conspiracies that the Super Bowl was rigged.
And people were sort of spewing out these fantasies that the Chiefs would win the rigged Super Bowl and then Taylor Swift would come out onto the field and endorse Joe Biden from the podium. And obviously, none of that happened. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl for the third time in five years. And they had their party. Taylor Swift was on the field, but she was just kind of like, oh, my God, congratulations.
And then she went and had a fun night with her boyfriend. And the endorsement has not happened.
The theory was that if these all-American heroes, her and him, were together, that would only magnify and amplify, give more weight to her eventual endorsement of Joe Biden. That was the sort of conspiracy theory. But they already, the right, already had their own beef with Travis Kelsey. They've got their own issues with him even before Taylor Swift entered the scene. What are those?
He's vaccinated. Yeah, the question is, what will break his heart first, his new relationship with Taylor Swift or the COVID shot? That remains to be seen. That's the beef, that he is vaccinated and he has a partnership with Pfizer. He and his mother, Donna Kelsey, made a commercial with Pfizer promoting the COVID-19 vaccine.
And on the right, in the United States, and I think throughout the world, in the aftermath of the pandemic, these conspiracies about the COVID-19 vaccine have just taken off like a wildfire. And there are a lot of conspiracies about, quote-unquote, mysterious deaths of athletes that, particularly in the United States, conservative influencers have attempted to tie to the vaccine. So there was a lot of chatter. It's this conflagration of an athlete who hasn't really been overtly political. I mean, Kelsey, I think the only other thing I can think of where he's really been outspoken politically was he also called for stricter gun laws a couple years back.
The only thing he and Taylor have really done is date each other. And independently, I think the right has projected a lot of their own culture, war issues and a lot of their own beliefs onto them as sort of foils for their own worldview.
There's one more thing on the chart sheet, though, isn't there, against Travis Kelsey, and that's his choice of beer.
Oh, yeah, Bud Light.
I mean, you've got to explain this to us. What is it with the right and Bud Light?
Oh, my gosh. Again, people like these things become so big, and then I give the explanation, and it all just seems incredibly dumb. So Bud Light last year did a promotional campaign where they provided influencers with a beer can with the influencer's face on it. And they sent one of those beer cans to Dylan Mulvaney. ...carrying skills, right?
I got some Bud Lights for us. It follows a polarizing and brief brand partnership.
with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney during March Madness, who told her 1.
8 million followers on Instagram.
that Bud Light sent her a can with her face on it,
celebrating her first year as a woman. Whatever team you love, I love too. Who is a transgender influencer who's been documenting her transition on TikTok. And the right has been losing their mind for almost a year about that beer can and the idea that, you know, Bud Light was becoming woke. They boycotted Anheuser-Busch.
And now, you know, Bud Light is seen by some people on the right, not all of them, because I think their sales are still pretty strong. Their stock has recovered as the quote, unquote, woke beer.
So you put all this together, the guy who is vaccinated and Bud Light, that's two strikes. And then a third one, now with Taylor Swift. So you can see why the right would begin to want to distance itself and ostracize Travis Kelsey. And now the two of them together. But the strange thing is, as we describe it, it sounds, you know, eccentric at the best.
The weird thing is, this actually wasn't just confined to the fringes, these various theories. Vivek Ramaswamy, former presidential candidate, I mean, a pretty fringe guy, but tweeting his own, you know, doubts about the truth of the relationship. You had. Donald Trump's former advisor on immigration, likely to be a big figure in a second Trump White House. if there is one.
Stephen Miller, suggesting that the Swift-Kelsey situation was not organic, his words. And, you know, Fox News and others. Was there any evidence, even a kernel of evidence, because often conspiracy theories do have a little germ of truth in them. Was there any evidence at all that Joe Biden was working in cahoots with Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey and the National Football League, the NFL, to cook up this relationship, all paving the way for some needle shifting endorsement?
No, no, of course not. And I think it speaks to the nature of conspiracies. You know, conspiracies, you're not laying out an argument in order to reach like a well-reasoned conclusion. You're laying out the conclusion and then backtracking and cherry picking, you know, the information that best supports your conclusion to sort of backfill the claim you are making. But the reality is there is very little for them to cherry pick outside of the independent political leanings that Kelsey and Taylor had before they even started dating each other.
And Travis Kelsey, like no disrespect to him, he's incredibly famous. But if there was a deep state CIA plot to hook Taylor up with a famous man in order to engineer a, you know, earth shattering endorsement of Joe Biden, there are many, many, many way more famous, way more politically influential men than Travis Kelsey.
We could have a very good game with asking listeners to write in with some names for alternative politically shifting partners that Taylor Swift could have connected with. That would be a good game. But what about Joe Biden himself? He did do this tweet after the Super Bowl, sort of mocking the whole conspiracy theory.
It's the cheeky message the Biden campaign posted moments after the Super Bowl ended. The president shooting laser beams from his eyes with the caption, just like we drew it up.
Well, the Biden administration did the tweet. What do you think? Was that, you know, some people were not so sure. Good idea, bad idea. What do you think?
The perspective I'm coming to it from is even some conservatives were reacting to this conspiracy being like, please stop. You're making us look crazy. And I think the Biden administration felt a little bit of safety, if you look at it that way, that, like, OK, even people on the right are calling this crazy. Obviously, there's no evidence to this. Obviously, it's so unserious that, treated like if they came out with a statement and addressed it as if it was a serious matter, I think it would have just fueled the fire.
So I think them making a joke about it was also a little bit of an attempt to sort of, you know, dismiss it while at the same time not giving it undue credence. And in that sense, I think it's OK. But I do think that there are plenty of other conspiracies in the United States that are no laughing matter. The conspiracy surrounding the 2020 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, January 6th, those are all things that I think the Biden administration has treated with a lot of seriousness. And in this case, because I also think that this is something that people who are promoting this theory should be mocked about, I'm OK with it.
Well, we this Valentine's week will leave Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey alone, and let's hope that sweet romance blossoms with the two of them without all the cynicism of politics intruding on their relationship. Nikki, we do always like to ask our guests a what else question. David Cameron, Britain's foreign secretary, this week provoked the ire of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I really don't care what David Cameron has to say. I think that's rude name calling, and I don't appreciate that type of language. And David Cameron needs to worry about his own country. And frankly, he can kiss my ass.
So you heard that response there, even coming as David Cameron was warning United States Congress not to show the weakness displayed against Hitler, urging them to pass the foreign aid bill, which has made it through the Senate, but now faces a stiffer challenge in the House. How likely do you think it is that that bill giving funds to Ukraine will make it through the narrowly Republican controlled House of Representatives?
It seems incredibly unlikely at this point. Republicans in the House have made aid for Ukraine contingent on increased funding for border security. Earlier this month, the Senate also passed a massive border security and immigration reform package that was rejected by the House of Representatives. And then, when the House indicated that they would be rejecting the foreign aid funding bill, they claimed that they had not received border legislation. The legislation is there.
They could pass both border reform and funding for Ukraine in two pen strokes, in two votes, one if they wanted to combine the bills. But the reality is that House Republicans have been incredibly vocal about the fact that they do not want to hand Joe Biden a policy victory in an election year. They will continue to harp on issues like border security, on the need for international aid to Israel, to Ukraine, to Taiwan. But when they're given the opportunity to pass that legislation, they outright reject it. And so when they tell David Cameron to, when Marjorie Taylor Greene tells him to kiss my ass, Cameron should know that the American people are being told the exact same thing.
The House of Representatives right now, which is controlled by Republicans, has been in a state of chaos for months, and it's completely paralyzed the U.
S. government.
And indeed, that state of chaos is only likely to be increased because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives got even narrower this week when Democrats snatched back from Republicans a seat that had been previously held by one, George Santos, the fabulist, who we covered extensively on this podcast. He now replaced by a Democrat and the Republican wafer thin majority just got even thinner. Nikki McCann Ramirez, thanks so much for joining me on Politics Weekly American.
Thank you so much for having me.
And that's all from me for this week. President Biden is expected to travel to East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday, more than a year after a train derailed in the village, worrying residents about what toxic chemicals were released into the air. As a result, my colleague, Donna Knorr, recorded a special Politics Weekly America episode on what's happened since the crash to prevent a similar accident occurring again. And we'll link to that in the show notes for today's episode. Also, this week, our sister podcast Today In Focus, spoke to The Guardian's Washington Bureau Chief David Smith for Tuesday's episode to discuss whether or not Joe Biden is just too old to run for president again and why Donald Trump doesn't face the same question, given he's not that much younger.
So do make sure to search for that wherever you get your podcasts. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Daniel Stevens, the executive producer, Maz Ebtehaj. I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks, as always, for listening.
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