As Donald Trump raged on (and on) about the size of his rally crowds and about immigrants supposedly eating the pets of the good people of Springfield, Ohio, Vice President Kamala Harris looked at her opponent in Tuesday night’s presidential debate with a blend of scorn, pity and disbelief that made me think about Taylor Swift’s song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” in which she coolly dissects a guy whose long con has finally run out.
Perhaps Swift saw something of herself too: Moments after the debate ended, the pop superstar endorsed Harris in a lengthy post on Instagram, where she has more than 283 million followers.
“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” she wrote, describing her determination to “watch and read everything I can” about the presidential candidates’ “proposed policies and plans for this country.” Harris will be getting her vote, she added, “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
Swift’s endorsement of Harris was probably inevitable.
In 2018, after years of staying out of politics, she told her fans that she planned to vote for Democrat Phil Bredesen over Republican Marsha Blackburn in a Tennessee Senate race. And in 2020, she came out in support of Joe Biden in his presidential campaign against Trump, posting a photo of herself holding a tray of Biden/Harris cookies and telling V magazine, “I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs.”
Yet this feels different, not least because of how dramatically Swift’s celebrity has grown over the last four years.
The blockbuster Eras tour, the smash rerecordings of her early work, the record fourth album of the year win at the Grammy Awards, the whirlwind romance with the NFL’s Travis Kelce — it’s all combined to make Swift arguably the most famous person in the world, with a vast and loyal following filled with the young voters coveted by politicians.
Certainly, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, welcomed the perceived value of Swift’s endorsement: Within minutes of the singer’s Instagram post, the vice president’s official merch store was offering Harris-Walz friendship bracelets modeled on those that Swifties eagerly trade at Eras tour dates. Told by Rachel Maddow live on MSNBC that Swift had thrown in with them, Walz grinned like he’d won the lottery.
But it’s not just the scale of Swift’s success that makes her endorsement stand out this time; it’s also her tone.
In a reference to much-discussed comments made by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, about women who don’t have children, Swift signed her note “Childless Cat Lady” — a kind of sneering flex we haven’t heard from her before on the rare occasions when she’s discussed politics.
The attitude is in keeping, though, with Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” particularly in a song like “But Daddy I Love Him,” in which she appears to be mocking the pearl-clutching contingent of her fan base that disapproved of her rumored pre-Kelce relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975 because of offensive jokes he’d made.
“God save the most judgmental creeps who say they want what’s best for me,” she sings, “Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see.” “But Daddy I Love Him” is a song about moving beyond the limitations of what people expect of Swift — violently crashing through those limitations, in fact — and it came to mind even before the debate when Swift was photographed at the U.S. Open in New York hugging her friend Brittany Mahomes after another bit of fan outrage connected to Mahomes’ apparent approval of Trump. (A flow chart might help keep all these alliances and rivalries straight.)
Basically, Swift’s enormous fame seems to have given her a sense of imperviousness to criticism — from trolls on social media, from fans who think they know what’s best for her, from red-state Swifties she’s seemed reluctant in the past to alienate with her progressive views.
In a funny twist, a sense of invincibility is also the trait that led Trump to bring Swift’s potentially damaging endorsement of Harris on himself.
On Instagram, Swift explained that she was moved to back Harris publicly because of Trump’s recent deployment of fake AI images that suggested she was endorsing the former president. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
In other words, Trump’s confidence that he could get away with using the bogus images of Swift — a confidence founded on everything else he’s gotten away with over the last few years — brought him into direct conflict with the only person on Earth whose swagger likely surpasses his.
Think for a second, if you haven’t, about the fact that Swift’s endorsement post didn’t feature a picture of Harris but of Swift herself (holding her cat, no less).
As much as this was about her belief in Harris’ political project, it was about her taking control of a threatened personal narrative, much as she does throughout “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Think Trump listened before messing with the wrong megastar?
