It’s been very clear for a very long time that Donald Trump has some complicated feelings about Taylor Swift. On one hand, the former president has quite obviously and openly pined for the pop megastar’s attention and admiration. He has also seemed to be fighting feelings of jealousy and scorn for Swift, both because she has repeatedly rejected him and also because of the amount of attention and adoration she receives that he does not. Now, five days after Swift endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, Trump has vented in a Truth Social post that “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
As my colleague Margaret Hartmann has chronicled, Trump has seemed to see himself as being in a one-sided popularity contest with Swift, reportedly griping in private over how Taylor was named Time’s 2023 person of the year instead of him, and early this year hatching a not-great plan to go scorched earth on her if she once again endorsed Joe Biden. Then, in an awkward Truth Social post in February, Trump practically begged Swift not to endorse Biden, insisting he deserved credit for her success and emphasizing that he really liked her and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual.
It then emerged that in an interview late last year, Trump said that while he didn’t listen to Swift’s music, she impressed him. “She’s got a great star quality, she really does,” he said, and Trump repeatedly, very creepily mentioned how “beautiful” he thought she was and that “I hear she’s very talented.” But Trump also wondered aloud whether she was a secret supporter of his, despite the plain fact that she very clearly, very publicly, did not support or like him at all.
So it should have come as no surprise that in August, when fake AI-generated images were circulated online suggesting Swift and her fans were big Trump fans, he enthusiastically embraced their support. And it should also come as no surprise that Trump is now having a hard time with Swift’s endorsement of Harris, not to mention her embrace of the “childless cat lady” label Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has used to denigrate the political legitimacy of America’s non-moms. Soon after the endorsement, Trump insisted he “was not a Taylor Swift fan” and speculated that after backing Harris, she would “probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”
A few days later, Trump seems to have entered a new more hateful stage of grief. If he soon threatens Swift and her boyfriend with postelection imprisonment, or tries to give her a half-baked derisive nickname, or adds a recurring tangent attacking her to his stump speech — then maybe that hate is for real. But if he starts mentioning why she should like him again, his purported hate might just be another pathetic pose.
