Right-wing social media influencers are peddling a conspiracy theory that pop star Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce’s relationship is an artificial ploy meant to benefit Democrats in the 2024 elections. And while some of former President Donald Trump’s biggest online cheerleaders are pushing the baseless claims, many of Trump’s supporters aren’t buying it.
“To be honest and blunt, I think that’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy,” said Nic Heimsoth, a two-time Trump voter from Kansas City, Missouri.
Whether it’s the right-wing influencer and Trump supporter Laura Loomer (who alleged a Democratic “Taylor Swift election interference psyop” on X), the far-right social media account “End Wokeness” (which wrote on X: “What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic and natural. It’s an op.”) or even Fox News host Jesse Waters (who claimed Swift was a “front for a covert political agenda”), the theory has become pervasive in right-wing circles.
MAGA influencers seem to believe, or at least claim to believe, that Swift and her boyfriend are Democratic puppets and that NFL games were rigged to get Kelce, perhaps with Swift in tow, to the Super Bowl this weekend.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” former GOP presidential candidate and Trump backer Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on X in late January. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
But for Trump voters — even some of whom believe that Trump won the 2020 presidential election and that Jan. 6 was an inside job — this Swift theory is a bridge too far.
Cynthia Yockey, 70, is a two-time Trump voter who plans to cast her ballot for him again in November. Yockey, a ghostwriter from Fairfield, Iowa, doesn’t trust Democrats. But that doesn’t mean she’s in on this conspiracy theory.
“The Democrats will use fair means and foul to win, but that’s nonsense,” she said of the conspiracy theory.
“Democrats’ record of hoaxes is pretty long,” she added. “It’s been a steady stream of manipulations, so it becomes easy to start to use that filter to see everything. I would love for Republicans to chill so that we start working with the real hoaxes.”
