Could Taylor Swift Influence the Upcoming Election?

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Conservatives are speculating on the timing of the pop star’s foray into politics, her connection to George Soros, and the effect on 2024.

News Analysis

Taylor Swift has yet to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. But questions continue to swirl about the potential impact the pop sensation may have on the upcoming November election.

Ms. Swift has remained largely apolitical throughout her career, but chronicled her newfound interest in politics in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.”

In the film, she attributes her former political apathy to her beginnings in country music. “Part of the fabric of being a country artist is don’t force your politics on people,” she says. “Let people live their lives. That is grilled into us.”

However, the singer’s connection to George Soros has been a point of concern for many supporters of former President Donald Trump. In 2019, Ms. Swift, 34, gave a speech at the Billboard Women in Music event, claiming the billionaire Democrat donor helped fund the purchase of her music catalog.

“This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent,” she said. “After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and that Carlyle Group.”

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The singer became an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump during his term and publicly endorsed the Biden–Harris ticket in 2020.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she wrote about President Trump on Twitter, now X, in May 2020. “‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”
She later wrote: “Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely.”

Many conservatives have speculated about the timing of her interest in politics.

“Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020,” conservative political activist Jack Posobiec wrote on X on Jan. 28.
The following day, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy responded to Mr. Posobiec’s tweet. “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, alluding to Ms. Swift’s relationship with boyfriend Travis Kelce, a tight end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.

“And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall,” he continued. “Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Psychological Warfare

During a recent segment on his show, “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Fox News host Jesse Watters questioned whether or not Ms. Swift was “a front for a covert political agenda.”

Mr. Watters shared a clip from the 2019 Cyber Conflict conference—organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. The video showed Alicia Bargar, a data scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, discussing her team’s research paper on how social network analysis can help “counter information operations.”

Ms. Bargar explained that “social influence can help encourage or promote behavior change,” noting that the pop star was a “fairly influential online person.”

“That’s real,” Mr. Watters said. “The Pentagon psyop unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online.”

The Department of Defense denied the claim. “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off,” spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a statement, cheekily referencing one of Ms. Swift’s most popular songs.

Political commentator Benny Johnson weighed in on the issue during a recent episode of his podcast, “The Benny Show.” Mr. Johnson called Soros’s 2019 purchase of Ms. Swift’s music catalog “one of the largest influence operations in world history,” noting that she seemingly grew more political after the deal.

“She never waded into the greater, overarching conversations about the political nature of her industry or this country—not through the Obama years, not through Trump […] until George Soros bought all the rights to her music.”

It’s worth noting that Swift did publicly endorse two Democrat candidates—Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives—in the 2018 midterms.

“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,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “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.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Ms. Swift’s representative for comment.

Biden Loses Favor Among Young Voters

Recent polling shows President Biden’s ratings have drastically dropped, along with support from young voters. According to a new USA Today/Suffolk University Poll, President Trump now leads Biden among registered voters under the age of 35—37 percent to 33 percent.

Some believe Ms. Swift’s backing of the president’s bid for reelection may help bolster younger voters—and potentially sway the upcoming election—citing her track record for getting people out to the polls.

In September 2023, the “Cruel Summer” singer took to Instagram to urge her more than 270 million followers to vote. “Are you registered to vote yet?” Swift wrote, including a link to the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org. She reportedly helped spur more than 35,000 registrations.
About 18 percent of voters say they’re “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by the famous megastar, according to a recent poll conducted for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies.

However, despite whatever influence she may or may not have on young voters—not everyone is convinced Ms. Swift will have a significant, if any, effect on the upcoming presidential election.

On his podcast, “Fearless,” conservative columnist Jason Whitlock emphatically said he believed she would have no impact at all. “We gotta come out of Taylor Swift derangement syndrome,” he said. “It’s making conservatives look bad.”

He added that if the Kansas City Chiefs happened to win the 2024 Super Bowl, it would do nothing to “elevate Taylor Swift and make her a better surrogate for the Democratic Party.”

“It’s not going to happen,” he said.

Original News Source Link – Epoch Times

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