Donald Trump promotes AI images to suggest that Taylor Swift endorsed him

Former President Donald Trump used images created by artificial intelligence suggesting that Taylor Swift had endorsed him. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times

The former president has been preoccupied with the popularity of the pop music megastar, who endorsed Joe Biden over him during the 2020 election.

Former President Donald Trump, who has notably harboured a grudge against pop music megastar Taylor Swift, set the internet ablaze Sunday when he shared social media posts suggesting that she had endorsed him and that her fans could help him win the November election.

In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump drew attention to a group of images that were created using artificial intelligence. One showed Swift dressed up as Uncle Sam with the headline: “Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump.” The others depicted a crowd of young women wearing matching “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.

At least one of the images, which were shared by a social media influencer aligned with Trump, was labelled “satire”.

“I accept,” Trump wrote in a post, seemingly implying that he had received Swift’s endorsement.

A representative for Swift, who has not made an endorsement this election cycle after backing Joe Biden in 2020, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The mockery from Democrats was swift.

Representative Eric Swalwell of California, appearing on CNN on Monday, said the move would backfire on Trump.

“This genius, over the weekend, decided to poke the eyes of Swifties and suggest that Taylor Swift is endorsing him,” Swalwell said. “They are going to have a marvellous time ruining everything for Donald Trump over the next 78 days.”

A.J. Delgado, a former campaign communications adviser for Trump in 2016 who sued him for wrongful termination, urged a publicist for Swift to clear up the misinformation.

“You’re going to let this go uncorrected?” she wrote on social platform X.

Trump’s tactics marked another twist in his long-running preoccupation with Swift, who earlier this year was the focus of a right-wing meltdown over her political preferences. The fixation of the Make America Great Again movement bubbled up around the Super Bowl, when Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, the Kansas Chiefs’ star tight end, won back-to-back titles.

Conspiracy theories proliferated that Swift was a secret agent of the Pentagon and that she was bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of Biden’s reelection.

At the time, Trump reportedly said that he was more popular than Swift and that it would be disloyal for her to support Biden’s reelection, given that Trump had signed legislation that made it easier for artists to collect royalties when their songs are streamed.

Then, Trump privately complained to a group of House Republicans during a June visit to Capitol Hill that Swift did not endorse him in 2020.

That year, Swift did not hold back her criticism of Trump amid the widespread protests after police in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?,” she wrote on Twitter, now X. ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Neil Vigdor

Photographs by: Doug Mills

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