Last month, former President Trump reposted a collage on Truth Social of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, with most of the images clearly appearing to be generated by AI.
“I accept!” Trump told his 7.1 million followers, as the world’s most famous childfree cat lover pounced on him, claws in hand.
Opinion columnist
Robin Abkarian
“I recently learned that an AI of ‘me’ was posted on his site falsely endorsing Donald Trump for President,” Taylor Swift wrote on Instagram shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris dominated Trump in their first, and likely only, debate. “It really brought home my fears about AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation. I’ve come to the conclusion that, as a voter, I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election. The easiest way to fight misinformation is to tell the truth.”
She then wrote that she would vote for Harris for president, and signed her post as a “childfree cat lady.”
“I think she’s a calm, talented leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm instead of chaos,” Swift told her 284 million followers.
We don’t know how many of those are American voters, but even a tiny fraction of them would be enough to change the outcome in a battleground state. In 2020, for example, Wisconsin voters chose President Biden over then-President Trump by 20,682 votes. In Georgia, the margin was even closer: Biden won the state by 11,779 votes, and Trump infamously asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 more votes, a plea that was likely illegal. But I digress.
Swift also encouraged her legions of fans to register to vote, saying, “Do your research, make your choice…. Remember, you need to be registered to vote!” She linked to a federally run voter registration site, and the effect was immediate: more than 405,000 people clicked on the link within 24 hours of Swift’s post.
Those clicks alone don’t necessarily translate into new registrations or voting, but Tom Bonnier of data firm TargetSmart says they can. “What we’ve seen is this massive increase, which we call the Swift effect,” Bonnier told “Face the Nation” last week, adding that data compiled since 2020 shows that about 80% of voters who register this late in the election cycle actually vote.
The day after Swift’s endorsement, Trump raged like the Wicked Witch of the West: “I hate Taylor Swift!” he shouted on Truth Social.
It seemed even more unpresidential than usual for Trump, prompting MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to say that Trump “has the most hateful heart and mind of any president in history.”
O’Donnell looked through the statements of past presidents and found that the only other president to use the word “hate” so openly was George H. W. Bush. I thought she was referring to Bush’s dislike of broccoli, but she was actually referring to Bush’s 2002 public expression of hatred for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Hatred is a powerful motivator, as is fear. In fact, hatred and fear are the most important arrows in Trump’s political quiver, essential to his bleak vision of an America that is crumbling and in need of a savior.
The Trump-Vance campaign’s scapegoating of legal Haitian immigrants who settled in Springfield, Ohio, may be unforgivable, but it is a natural extension of the politics of hate. Similarly, Trump has a strangely close relationship with the Islamophobic, racist-loser Laura Loomer, and of course, he has consistently supported the white supremacists and Holocaust deniers who swirl around Mar-a-Lago.
His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, is a prime example of how essential hatred is to Trump’s success.
“I think our people hate the right people,” Vance, who was running for Senate in 2021, told The American Conservative in an interview, perhaps intended as a witty one, close to an analogy he invented around the same time, comparing Democrats to childless Catwomen.
Vance’s hateful comments deeply represent the very ethos of the MAGA movement.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s targeting of his hatred towards Swift will backfire.
But how nice would it be if Harris could pull off a win with a bit of momentum?
Robin Kavkarian