Is Taylor Swift a Biden psyop? Here’s the far-right’s ‘proof’ | EUROtoday

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The parallel universes of American politics and celeb collided in essentially the most weird approach doable this week after a fringe conspiracy principle questioning pop celebrity Taylor Swift’s newest relationship was picked up by hot-headed conservative media pundits fretting over her potential to swing the end result of November’s presidential election in Joe Biden’s favour.

Ms Swift, maybe essentially the most well-known particular person on the earth proper now and a Biden booster in 2020, is at the moment relationship Kansas City Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce and has been recurrently noticed within the stands at his video games, becoming a member of his household in cheering him on and dancing joyously with the gang, notably in the course of the Chiefs’ current win over the Baltimore Ravens, which despatched them to the Super Bowl.

The star, identified for her autobiographical songwriting, seems pleased in her private life, on the peak of her powers professionally and is now as ubiquitous a presence in protection of the NFL as she is on social media.

But with the Chiefs set to play the San Francisco 49ers within the greatest fixture within the American sports activities calendar on Sunday 11 February, some rights-wing pundits insist they odor a rat.

“The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce). All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA,” Rumble influencer Mike Crispi tweeted on Sunday earlier than the Ravens recreation.

“Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield,” he raved. “It’s all been an op since day one.”

A day later, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy picked up the thread, taking to X to predict “a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall”.

On Newsmax that very same day, anchor Greg Kelly struck a observe of evangelical disapproval when he denounced Ms Swift’s followers for “worshipping” her and declaring: “This is a little bit of what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!”

Fox News commentators together with Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and OutKick host Tomi Lahren quickly joined within the enjoyable as Rolling Stone quoted a Maga insider threatening a “holy war” in opposition to the star if she tried to jeopardise Donald Trump’s possibilities of returning to the White House.

Taylor’s model

Although she could effectively find yourself doing so, Taylor Swift has not but truly endorsed Mr Biden this time round.

The New York Times reported on Monday that aides to the president are hoping to signal her on as a marketing campaign surrogate in view of her mighty cultural affect, believing {that a} good phrase from her would go a great distance in direction of delivering thousands and thousands of votes and sweeping President Biden again to the Oval Office on a tidal wave of enthusiasm, making a nonsense of his at the moment poor polling.

Her potential endorsement would definitely add some sorely-needed rocket gasoline to the 81-year-old Democrat’s marketing campaign for a second time period, with three insiders saying that his camp is assuming she’s going to finally come out for him, simply as she did 4 years in the past when she enthusiastically posed with a plate of pro-Joe cookies.

Ms Swift has not been afraid to make use of her platform for political functions up to now, urging her followers to get out and vote and endorsing two Democrats working in her residence state of Tennessee within the 2018 midterms, a gesture that led Mr Trump to say he preferred her music “about 25 per cent less now”.

During the 2020 election, she retaliated by accusing the then-president of making an attempt to “blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk” after his administration labored to restrict mail-in voting in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing voters to congregate at polling stations and danger spreading the virus and getting sick.

Trump reputation contest

As you may think, the Republican’s response to the Swift furore has been largely petulant, though he has managed to withstand attacking her on Truth Social, thus far.

Mr Trump is alleged to have boasted in personal that no quantity of celeb endorsements will enhance his opponent’s wretched polling and insisted, in line with Rolling Stonethat he’s “more popular” than the star anyway and, furthermore, that his followers are way more devoted than hers.

The Swifties have already hit again on that final level, with the group Voters of Tomorrow warning the Republican front-runner in an announcement: “Gen Z has a message for Trump: Go ahead and keep attacking Taylor Swift. We dare you. By picking a fight with Taylor, you are picking a fight with young voters. And the last thing you need is an even worse reputation with us come November.”

Equally predictably, the previous president is alleged to be bitterly jealous that Ms Swift was named Time journal’s “Person of the Year” for 2023 forward of him, seething that it was “obviously” absurd that her face ought to grace the journal’s December difficulty rather than his.

“Joe Biden might be counting on Taylor Swift to save him, but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’,” Trump adviser Jason Miller advised Rolling Stone in an announcement, quoting the title of considered one of her songs from 2012.

Another particular person engaged on Mr Trump’s marketing campaign advised the music journal that Ms Swift publically backing Mr Biden once more “would be more fuel thrown onto the culture war fires”, characterising such a gesture as “another left-wing celebrity who is part of the Democrat elite telling you what to think” and predicting an adversarial response from the voting public.

Conservative media in meltdown mode

The outlandish concept that Taylor Swift’s all-American fairytale romance with a prime soccer star is de facto an ingenious Democrat “psyop” (psychological operation) meant to brainwash thousands and thousands of individuals into backing Mr Biden truly seems to have been gaining traction for weeks prior to the current blow-up.

When the offending Time cowl was unveiled on 6 December, the Republican’s former White House adviser Stephen Miller steered that the star’s reputation was “not organic”, and hard-right agitator Jack Posobiec declared: “The Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated. From her hand-selected vaccine shill boyfriend to her DINK lifestyle to her upcoming 2024 voter operation for Democrats on abortion rights. It’s all coming.”

The principle then gained additional momentum on 9 January when Trump-affiliated lawyer Jeffrey Clark shared a video on X claiming to indicate “the Pentagon psychological operations unit float[ing] turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting”.

The clip in query is reportedly taken from the 2019 International Conference on Cyber Conflict in Estonia, organised by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

It reveals speaker Alicia Marie Bargar, a researcher with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, discussing the theoretical energy of influencers to form public opinion and providing Ms Swift for example of “a fairly influential online person” who may maintain ample sway over others to “help encourage or promote behaviour change”.

The similar excerpt was subsequently proven on Jesse Watters’ Fox present that very same day, throughout which he declared in tongue-in-cheek style: “Yeah, that’s real: the Pentagon psyop unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online.”

The host was cautious so as to add that he “obviously has no evidence” that Ms Swift is “a front for a covert political agenda” however mentioned: “If we did, we’d share it… We’re curious.”

When the prospect of her with the ability to drive voters away from Mr Trump was aired this week, amongst these commenting on the identical community was Mr Hannity, who speculated about her motivations for (doubtlessly) supporting President Biden on Tuesday by saying, in a damage style: “Maybe she just bought into all the lies about conservatives and Republicans, that they are racist and sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and transphobic and Islamophobic.

“And Republicans and conservatives want dirty air and water, and a total ban on all abortion with no exceptions. If she believes all that, she is believing a lie. Because those talking points are simply untrue.”

The absurdity of such speak has naturally enabled late-show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert to have a area day at conservatives’ expense, with Mr Kimmel dismissing the affair as a “chorus of cuckoos” and warning his viewers: “This nonsense is now everywhere your angry grandpa goes.”

He continued: “The same people who believe Joe Biden has dementia and needs Kamala Harris to feed him butterscotch tapioca every night also believe that he has somehow planned and executed a diabolically brilliant scheme to fix the NFL playoffs so the biggest pop star in the world can pop up on the Jumbotron during the Super Bowl in between a Kia and a Tostitos commercial to hypnotise her 11-year-old fans into voting for Joe Biden.

“I mean, it makes sense. It makes total sense. These people. These people think football is fake and wrestling is real.”

As for Donald Trump, the Taylor Swift furore has no less than supplied him with some respite from his unending authorized issues, together with the humiliating protection of his defamation lawsuit loss to E Jean Carroll, requiring him to pay the author $83.3m in damages.

With a verdict additionally imminent in his New York civil fraud trial that might find yourself costing him an additional $370m in monetary penalties, he must be glad of a distracting smokescreen like this each time he can get one.