Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty
Taylor Swift’s political leanings have been a topic of debate for many years now (Swift herself released a whole documentary about it). The Tortured Poets Department singer has a long history with Donald Trump, who practically begged her not to endorse his 2024 opponent. And a troubling number of Americans believe an unhinged conspiracy theory about Biden and Swift rigging the Super Bowl in favor of her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs.
So what’s really going on here? Has Taylor Swift actually endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election? What’s her relationship with Biden and Trump? Could Swifties really decide the election, as some pundits have suggested? Here’s a guide to Swift’s stance on the 2024 election, which we’ll keep updated and packed with Easter eggs that will tell you the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) release date (just kidding).
No.
Probably! She’s yet to announce her preferred candidate in the 2024 election, but since she endorsed Biden in 2020, it seems likely that she’ll do so again.
Swift hasn’t commented on Biden recently. She made her first public presidential endorsement about a month before the 2020 election, announcing her support for the Biden-Harris ticket with this tweet, featuring a batch of campaign logo cookies:
Swift told V magazine:
The change we need most is to elect a president who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose what happens to their bodies, and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included. Everyone deserves a government that takes global health risks seriously and puts the lives of its people first. The only way we can begin to make things better is to choose leaders who are willing to face these issues and find ways to work through them.
I will proudly vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential election. Under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs.
In recent years, Swift has periodically encouraged her social-media followers to vote. After she posted an Instagram message about registering to vote in September 2023, the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org recorded 35,252 new registrations on National Voter Registration Day, a 23 percent increase over the previous year.
On March 5, 2024 she encouraged her supporters to vote on Super Tuesday, but she didn’t back any specific candidates.
After confusing Swift for Britney Spears during his 2023 turkey pardon, Biden made clear this year that he does in fact know who she is, and would appreciate another endorsement.
In February 2024, Biden joked several times about working with Swift to rig the Super Bowl for the Kansas City Chiefs. He referenced the baseless conspiracy theory — which nearly one in five Americans believe — in his first TikTok and this post-game social-media post:
When Seth Meyers asked the president to “confirm or deny” that there is an “active conspiracy” between him and Swift a short time later, the president answered, “It’s classified.” He repeated the line when asked if she might endorse him again in 2024.
While Biden has tried to play it cool in public, in January the New York Times reported that his campaign desperately wants Swift to get involved in the 2024 race:
… The biggest and most influential endorsement target is Ms. Swift … Fund-raising appeals from Ms. Swift could be worth millions of dollars for Mr. Biden.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a top Biden surrogate, all but begged Ms. Swift to become more involved in Mr. Biden’s campaign when he spoke to reporters after a Republican primary debate in September.
“Taylor Swift stands tall and unique,” he said. “What she was able to accomplish just in getting young people activated to consider that they have a voice and that they should have a choice in the next election, I think, is profoundly powerful.”
The chatter around Ms. Swift and the potential of reaching her 279 million Instagram followers reached such intensity that the Biden team urged applicants in a job posting for a social media position not to describe their Taylor Swift strategy — the campaign had enough suggestions already. One idea that has been tossed around, a bit in jest: sending the president to a stop on Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour.
She publicly criticized Trump for the first time on June 1, 2019 in an open letter to Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander, urging the Republican to ensure protections for the LGBTQ+ community by passing the Equality Act. She said of then-President Trump:
I personally reject the President’s stance that his administration “supports equal treatment of all,” but that the Equality Act, “in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to determine parental and conscience rights.” No, one cannot take the position that one supports a community, while condemning it in the next breath as going against “conscience” or “parental rights.” That statement implies that there is something morally wrong with you being anything other than heterosexual or cisgender, which is an incredibly harmful letter to send to a nation full of healthy and loving families with same-sex, non-binary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.
Swift kept her political views to herself until the 2018 midterms, when she spoke out against Tennessee Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn. Swift explained why she’d previously remained silent in her Instagram post opposing Blackburn (who went on to win the election):
In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.
Swift’s decision to endorse two Democrats in the 2018 midterms was a major plot point in her documentary Miss Americana). In the film, per The Daily Beast, she says she regrets not denouncing Trump publicly in 2016:
In Miss Americana, released in 2020, Swift calls Blackburn “Trump in a wig” in footage of conversations leading up to her decision to drop the post. When one of Swift’s entourage warns her that speaking out against the candidate will prompt the press to conclude that she is also condemning Trump, Swift makes her stance clear. “I don’t care if they write that,” she says. “I’m sad I didn’t say it two years ago.”
As the 2020 election grew closer, Swift voiced her support for the Black Lives Matter movement and criticized Trump several times on Twitter. In May 2020 she promised “we will vote you out in November”:
And in August 2020, she accused Trump of trying to sabotage mail-in voting and said his “ineffective leadership” had “gravely worsened” the COVID-19 crisis:
Yes, on more than one occasion. In January 2020 Swift released the song “Only the Young” to accompany the Miss Americana documentary. The lyrics seemed to make reference to Trump winning the 2016 election and other political issues, like school shootings: “You go to class, scared / Wondering where the best hiding spot would be / And the big bad man and his big bad clan / Their hands are stained with red.”
In October 2020, Swift allowed Representative Eric Swalwell’s Remedy PAC to use the song in a pro-Biden ad and got a personal thank you from Kamala Harris:
While Swift’s 2019 song “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” is less explicitly anti-Trump, she confirmed in a September 2019 Rolling Stone interview that the high-school metaphor in the song is about Trump-era politics:
There are so many influences that go into that particular song. I wrote it a couple of months after midterm elections, and I wanted to take the idea of politics and pick a metaphorical place for that to exist. And so I was thinking about a traditional American high school, where there’s all these kinds of social events that could make someone feel completely alienated. And I think a lot of people in our political landscape are just feeling like we need to huddle up under the bleachers and figure out a plan to make things better.
We know from this clip of Trump quietly driving his Rolls-Royce while listening to “Blank Space,” which was filmed by Melania Trump and posted on her Facebook page, that he doesn’t mind her music.
Trump tweeted about Swift several times during the Red era. He said the Swift-Connor Kennedy breakup was “great news” for her, and called her “terrific.” He also cryptically thanked Swift for the “beautiful picture.” As the Daily Beast notes, “if this tweet implies the existence of a photo of Swift and Trump posing together, it has almost certainly been scrubbed from the internet forever at the hands of Tree Paine, Swift’s formidable publicist.”
Trump mildly rebuked Swift in 2018 after she endorsed the opponent of his preferred Tennessee Senate candidate, Marsha Blackburn, per The Daily Beast:
Shortly afterward at a press conference, Trump smirked that he was “sure Taylor Swift has nothing, or doesn’t know anything about [Blackburn].” Then the infamous quote, later referenced on the Taylor Swift Netflix documentary Miss Americana: “And let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?”
Today the ex-president and the pop star are engaged in a popularity contest (in his mind, at least). Rolling Stone reported in January:
Behind the scenes, Trump has reacted to the possibility of Biden and Swift teaming up against him this year not with alarm, but with an instant projection of ego. In recent weeks, the former president has told people in his orbit that no amount of A-list celebrity endorsements will save Biden. Trump has also privately claimed that he is “more popular” than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does, a person close to Trump and another source with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Last month, the source close to Trump adds, the ex-president commented to some confidants that it “obviously” made no sense that he was not named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year — an honor that went to none other than Swift in December.
On February 11, Trump made a desperate attempt to steal attention from Kelce and Swift and convince her not to endorse Biden. He posted this on Truth Social hours before the Super Bowl:
Trump has been careful not to criticize Swift in public. In a November 2023 interview conducted for the forthcoming book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, Trump repeatedly called Swift “beautiful,” and questioned whether she’s actually liberal. Variety published an excerpt from the book on June 10:
Trump, usually one to punch back at critics, is smart enough to know Swift’s fame is on another level. “She’s got a great star quality,” Trump says. “She really does.” Trump is effusive as he uses one of his favorite adjectives to describe women—“beautiful”— several times in a row.
“I think she’s beautiful—very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually—unusually beautiful!” It’s her fame, not her songcraft, that fascinates Trump. When asked about Swift’s music, played so frequently on the radio that it’s inescapable in daily life, he says, “Don’t know it well.”
Beyond Swift’s looks, what intrigues Trump the most is the idea— frequently bandied about online before she endorsed the Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee in 2018—that she could secretly be supporting him. “But she is liberal, or is that just an act?” he asks me. “She’s legitimately liberal? It’s not an act? It surprises me that a country star can be successful being liberal.”
I tell Trump that Swift is no longer a country star; she’s been making pop music for years. He doesn’t seem aware of this, but he reaches for a different name. “Garth Brooks is liberal. Explain that! How does it happen? But he’s liberal.” Trump trails off. “It’s one of those things . .”
But during a closed door meeting with Republican members of Congress on June 13, Trump reportedly complained about Swift being a Biden supporter:
In 2020, Swift officially endorsed Biden less than a month before Election Day. If she follows that precedent, she might make an endorsement while she’s on a break from The Eras Tour. The European leg of her tour runs from May 9 to August 20, followed by a ten-week break. Election Day is November 5, and Swift’s tour resumes in Canada the following week.
Could the megastar help boost turnout in the November election, especially among younger voters who aren’t that enthusiastic about another Biden-Trump matchup? That’s what multiple commentators have suggested. But PolitiFact poured cold water on the idea:
… it is misguided to assume that Swift’s potential involvement in the race would be a magic bullet with guaranteed results. Experts say it often takes more than a single message or action for celebrity endorsements to move the needle in elections. And younger people could be particularly hard to sway because they consistently chalk up the lowest turnout rates at the polls. An endorsement would draw attention, but her fans already lean left.
On the other hand, Biden did beat Trump in 2020. And betting against the power of Swifties is usually a bad idea.
This piece has been updated throughout.
