Look What You Made Her Do: Taylor Swift's Call To Arms

What if one tweet could swing an entire election? In this episode, we dissect the extraordinary political upheaval ignited by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris after Donald Trump promoted AI-generated misinformation. Swift's endorsement wasn't just a showing of support; it was a call to arms that her fans appear eager to heed. Trump’s unrestrained behavior—especially his reckless tweet about hating Taylor Swift—has backfired spectacularly.

We unravel the complex web of celebrity influence, social media power plays, and misinformation, highlighting how Swift’s strategic responses have not only mobilized her massive fan base but could sway voters across generations. From AI-generated images to savvy denouncements, we dig into how this battle has created a political firestorm that Trump and his MAGA allies never saw coming.

This episode offers an eye-opening look at the intersection of pop culture and politics, showing the profound impact a single public figure can have on the democratic process. We also dive into how Swift’s political stance could ripple through households, influencing parents to reconsider their voting decisions based on their children’s activism. Get ready for a deep dive into how this high-profile feud has reshaped the 2024 election dynamics and what it means for both campaigns.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Impact of Taylor Swift's Endorsement
• 11:16 Taylor Swift's Powerful Political Influence
• 15:46 Taylor Swift's Political Influence on Parents

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

There's an old adage in politics don't ever pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Simply put, if you are in the public eye and you need to win public approval, don't pick a fight with a newspaper, because they can make your life miserable, because they have the means by which to do it. Fairly straightforward, let's translate that into the 21st century and today's political age. Let's translate that into the 21st century and today's political age. Maybe, I don't know. Don't pick a fight with someone who can grab Instagram likes by the millions. Seems like a good comparison. Well, donald Trump and his never-ending commitment to breaking norms and looking the other way at common sense decided to violate this unwritten rule of politics, and did so in spectacular fashion, in ways that I don't think we really can quite comprehend at this point. When he came out and attacked Taylor Swift after she endorsed Kamala Harris immediately following the Trump-Harris debate and it actually started a little bit earlier than that the seeds were kind of planted in advance. But in doing all of this, trump created one of the most insane self-forced errors that I think we'll ever see in American politics. So good afternoon.

Speaker 1: 1:51

This is the Keystone Marketing Podcast for Wednesday, september 18th 2024. I'm Jesse White. We are 40 days out from the 2024 election and one of the biggest factors is the Taylor Swift impact and I don't think that people quite understand what that impact will be, partially because this is kind of an outlier. You know, we talk about endorsements all the time time and some people make a really big deal about endorsements and a lot of times they're much ado about nothing. And I always say to candidates is look, if someone or an organization is going to endorse you, are they donating to your campaign? Are they putting people out in the streets to help you? Are they putting boots on the ground? If they're not willing to do either of those things, or maybe talk to their membership to a lesser extent, the endorsement isn't worth very much. And you see campaigns all the time go around and rack up endorsements and they get crushed because endorsements don't vote Right. This isn't that. This is something entirely different. And if you follow Taylor Swift at all which I only have in kind of a passing way I'm more of a Kesha kind of guy myself, but the way that this all evolved did not happen overnight. There's a documentary out I believe it's still on Netflix where Taylor Swift was taking a stand in politics.

Speaker 1: 3:11

Going back to the Dobbs decision and you know and that kind of thing, and there's a scene in it where her team, including, I believe, her parents, are kind of like not trying to talk her out of it, but saying, hey, do you understand what you're about to do here? Like, do you get the enormity of what this could mean? And I'm talking about back in 2022. And she was like, yeah, I get it, I want to do this and to her credit, you know, in a world where so many people, you know, use the oh well, I can't speak out because dot dot, dot as a way to avoid getting their voices heard out there, and you know, and having to deal with the reality of that, she was like I don't care. And having to deal with the reality of that, she was like I don't care. This is that to a level that doesn't even compare.

Speaker 1: 4:00

And you have to go back just a little bit earlier to when Trump. Usually you look at fights and you're like, well, he started, she started whatever. Well, trump absolutely started this one, because there were people out there that were circulating AI-generated images of Taylor Swift basically supporting Trump. They were circulating AI generated images of Taylor Swift basically supporting Trump. They were clearly AI and Trump took them and shared them online. He reposted them with I don't have the verbatim, but basically it was like thanks for the support, right when anybody with half a brain knew that that was A not actually Taylor Swift, and B that she does not support him. But he was like, oh, wait, here we'll just share this and let people think that she is, because in his mind everybody's stupid and I think, maybe to his credit, maybe more of that's being demonstrated than we'd like to admit.

Speaker 1: 4:48

But that was really kind of that kind of started everything going and there was kind of, if you remember the last night of the DNC there was a big talk about there was going to be a surprise guest and no one knew who it was going to be. It ended up being nobody, for whatever reason, whether it was teased on purpose to try to keep viewership up through Harris's speech or there was a scheduling snafu. There were all these like little weird oh so-and-so's in the building and it was like did it either be Beyonce or Taylor Swift? And I remember talking to a friend that night like right before the speeches started, and I was like look if it's Taylor Swift. I mean, that's maybe one of the only people that could actually upstage Kamala Harris, which is probably why it won't be her, because she would be the story over the nominee. That's clearly not the narrative you're looking for, but it would have been a massive deal if she was there in a political function, not just to perform.

Speaker 1: 5:42

And I'm looking at Taylor Swift's post that she did on Instagram after the debate and it said part of it is recently I was made aware that AI of quote me falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential campaign run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI and the danger of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. That's a whole lot of words to say F around and find out right, that's what she's basically saying. It had been one thing if it had been just circulating in the right wing Twittersphere or something like that, but the second Trump, with his massive ability to, you know, amplify, took it and pushed it out there on his own. He gave it, like the former presidential, stamp of approval. I guess you could say that took it to a whole different level because, as with any cult leader, his followers believe anything he says to be the gospel truth. So that became fact at that point. Well, taylor Swift supporting Donald Trump Now what that's? It move on.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And so clearly, whether it was tactical for her to wait until after, uh, the convention, or if she decided, uh, you know, that was kind of like she watched kamala harris's speech and thought, okay, this is like a no-brainer, I've got to get behind her, this is how I can do it. Whatever, it kind of doesn't matter. She put that endorsement out and again legitimately broke the Internet, at least the political part of it. And the post, as of right now I'm looking at it, has 11.2 million likes on Instagram. Now I get it Likes. You know, social media engagement is like yard signs, right? Yard signs don't vote, Instagram likes don't vote. Fair enough, fair enough.

Speaker 1: 7:43

However, the way in which she did it was so smart and eloquent, which she says I've done my research and I've made my choice. Your research is all yours to do and the choice is yours to make. So then she puts in there the link. She put a link in there to a voteorg, like a custom link that they could track. That link has now received over 400,000 unique clicks just from that link.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Again, are all those people registering to vote? Who knows? There's just no way to know quite yet, but as anybody that's ever done a voter registration drive can tell you, getting 400,000 people to at least make that first step to go to the site is massive. That's massive. I mean, that's a huge shift, especially when you look at how narrow the elections have been in these swing states. You know you start talking about 10, 20,000 voters in a state like Pennsylvania. Oh, oh.

Speaker 1: 8:38

That becomes very problematic for the Trump campaign, especially because, if you go back to Obama in 08, one of the smartest things they did and I remember being on the ground when they did this as a state rep I was you know we worked with the campaigns and everybody just assumed it was going to be business as usual and they were like no, we're going to use the entire summer of 2008 to register new voters. Because they knew, especially given the racial politics and everything at play they knew that the map as it existed was not good for them. So they did something really smart they expanded the edges of the map as it existed was not good for them. So they did something really smart. They expanded the edges of the map, so to speak, by going out nationally and registering a ton of new voters that nobody had really counted on before. Everybody had been so busy, just kind of like dividing up what was already there and all of a sudden you've got this new influx of voters that are almost exclusively going to be for Obama, because the Obama campaign signed them up and that allowed them to expand the electorate just enough for them to win. This is kind of like that and it really. You know, I read the endorsement, I watched it. I was like wow, it was so well done.

Speaker 1: 9:51

And she goes. She talks about why, she talks about Tim Walls, she talks about standing up for LGBTQ plus rights, ivf, woman's right to her own body, all of the things you know say. She's a steady handed, gifted leader, said all the right things. Right, it was a very. I think part of the problem that you saw on the right is they wanted to paint her as like little girl. She's just a little girl. She doesn't know what she's talking about Partially because Taylor Swift came on the scene as a very young person. She's not a kid. It's as well written and intelligent and damn near perfect as it could ever be Right. And the fact that she signs it Childless, cat, lady, clear, you know, hit at what Vance had said and a picture of her and her cat. It was perfect. Now, so that's bad, right, that's like that's.

Speaker 1: 10:49

If you're running a campaign, you're like, oh boy, this is not good. You know what you don't need. You don't need your candidate, who also has a massive social media following, to go out and tweet or post the following in all caps I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT. That might be the four most damaging words ever put out on social media to a political campaign. Utterly insane.

Speaker 1: 11:16

And it was at that moment, by the way, that I realized there are no guardrails with him. There is not a single person on the planet that has the ability to step in and say yo, big man, put the phone down. We'll go get you some KFC, it'll be all good, put the phone down. There's nobody in his orbit. That's telling him that there's nobody willing to stand up to him, which, by the way, for those who think that when you talk about being an autocrat or a wannabe dictator, you know there's whole thing of oh well, there'll be people around him that will let him do that. Yeah, not this time around. He learned his lesson last time. All those people are going to stand up to him. They're all going to be gone. It's going to be like the Laura Loomer administration if this guy gets reelected, so there's nobody around him to. If you can't stop him from doing that, you can't stop him from doing anything Like. That's the political equivalent of launching nuclear missiles, right? I mean, the damage to your campaign is almost as bad as the actual damage from launching missiles. So he tweets that out and the response was just.

Speaker 1: 12:20

It was just kind of crazy disbelief. Even for Donald Trump, who we've all allowed ourselves to just kind of become normalized to his level of crazy. Everyone's like whoa, whoa, dude, are you okay? What are you thinking? And now the right is attacking her and trying to minimize her and all the things that you would do. Here's the problem that they're not getting, and I don't think a lot of people are getting, because what they did, they didn't just Taylor Swift's fans, or not even people that are fans, people that like her and respect her. Right, you know, you can like her and respect her, without even listening to her music very much, but the people that were going to respond to that.

Speaker 1: 13:02

It's one thing for her to come out of nowhere and be like, hey, this is who I'm supporting. It's an entirely different thing for her to say and she said it so expertly in her endorsement I'm speaking up because they came after me with misinformation and that, right, there is the difference. And then it was punctuated by what Trump did. But that first part this was not an endorsement as much as a call to arms saying I need you. She doesn't come out and say it, which is even smarter, but basically they're like look, she says, look, this is what's happened to me. I need you to know what I'm thinking. Do what you want, but this is what I'm going to do. For all of these people that love Taylor Swift or respect her, this is their opportunity to do something for her right, like it's not a passive thing, like we have to defend Taylor. Right, we have to come to her defense because look at what these mean people are doing to her. So that was like the call to arms. Then, when Trump tweeted out I hate Taylor Swift, like that was. Like that was. Like that was D-Day, that was Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Politically, right now we're not. We're not just on high alert, we are at war. Right, and I know everybody gets the Republicans are making a lot of noise about, you know, strong rhetoric and comparisons. Yeah, nobody's talking about actual physical war, right, we're talking about politically. This was war. You know. It's like the line from 99 Love Balloons. You know, this is what we've waited for. This is it, boys, this is war. Mount up Right now. I just pulled from regulators. I'm really dating myself and my musical references, but that's fine. Mount up right. Register to vote, get involved, do all the things.

Speaker 1: 14:42

It became an entirely different thing because now, when it's one thing to say, oh well, they did this thing and it wasn't nice, but it was, you know, misinformation and AI and it's a little, you know, whatever, it's another thing to be like Donald Trump says I hate Taylor Swift. You know for the fact that someone that's running for president and is a former president to say they hate anybody while at the same time complaining about everybody being mean to him and doing it to a woman not a good look under any circumstances, but doing it to somebody with maybe the most popular woman on planet Earth, at least from an entertainment point of view, is utter insanity, even for him. He talks about the economy. Taylor Swift, when she comes to town for a concert, is an actual economic driver. She moves economic indicators because her concerts generate so much money of people coming in and spending and doing whatever Like she. Actually there's a tangible impact when Taylor Swift comes to town. So think about that. If she has the ability to change a city's economic picture, why would you think she couldn't do the same in terms of an election?

Speaker 1: 15:46

But here's the kicker, and this is the part that I think a lot of people are missing. This is not just the question of are a bunch of little teeny boppers going to go out and register to vote and actually vote? That's part of it, sure. But here's the bigger thing, and this is the part that I think could really change the equation. You are going to have young women and men, but you're going to have young people asking their parents at the dinner table for the first time ever mom, dad, who are you voting for? And at that point, as a parent, I can relate to this. At that point they've got a decision to make, because they're going to say well, you know, taylor, I saw this thing with Taylor Swift and blah, blah, blah. You can either say, yes, I'm voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I was all along and I'm you know, we're all good or they could lie to their kids which is a dicey proposition and say, oh yeah, yeah sure, and then they're going to vote for Trump anyway.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Or they could risk really changing the way their kids look at them, because a lot of these kids and by I don't mean little kids, I'm talking about teenagers, whether they're a voting age or not but if this is their entree into politics and they feel passionate about it for whatever reason, if this is the thing that has them asking questions or looking at things and they go to their parents or their grandparents in a way that they've never had before, right, they've never come at them in a political sense before. And these might be people who allowed themselves to find ways to be complacent and vote for Trump, even though they knew they probably shouldn't. They were kind of making excuses as to why, to justify it, rationalize it, which is a whole other discussion we need to have. This could tip the scales, because I could tell you, as a parent, I look across the table and my kids, who are nine and 10, if there's something that matters to them really matters to them. It matters to me too. It just does. That's what being a parent is, and if these young people largely are are responding to how Taylor Swift was attacked, that was the key, not that she chose to endorse or support a candidate. The way she was attacked viciously for doing so, led by a former president of the United States, which is almost an impossible thing to say out loud, and the parents are not going to have an explanation for that, it's an inexplicable thing for Trump to have done.

Speaker 1: 18:15

This could be the thing that tips the scales, because it's one thing if the quote teeny bopper goes out and votes and expands the electorate, which is useful. It's an entirely different thing if that discussion at the dinner table causes people that weren't necessarily going to vote for Kamala Harris. If this is the thing that gives them the reason, because they want to have the respect of their kids, because what matters to their kids matters to them, that is seismic, absolutely seismic in an election, especially in an election where it will be so close and I'm quite certain that there will be as we get into vote by mail and we get closer to the election, there will be more Taylor Swift appearances. Right, she's going to come out on election day and say, hey, don't forget to do this, or don't forget to vote in the state she's clearly all in, but doing it in a very smart, tactical way, and this could be the single biggest outlying part of the equation that nobody saw coming. The variable, the wild card, changes everything, and for the right to dismiss it and continue to attack her, the single smartest thing that they could do right now and it won't happen, because he's never apologized to anybody for anything ever would be for Donald Trump to send out something apologizing to Taylor Swift because she is a thing about it. Of all the women that he has taken on, you know, in his entire career I mean, the guy hates women of all the women he has taken on, this Taylor Swift is the one who perhaps is the biggest threat to finally take him down, and he doesn't see it. And then maybe the hubris and the blindness that allowed him to go down that road might be the very thing that causes his political demise. And boy, I can't wait for the Taylor Swift song about how she got wrong by that guy and what she did about it.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Thank you for listening to the Keystone Reckoning Podcast. We'll be back with another one tomorrow. Please, if you want to support what we're doing, visit keystonereckoningcom, make a contribution to our pack and visit our sponsor, truebluegearcom. I'm Jesse White. See you tomorrow.