How Much Damage Will Taylor Swift's Endorsement Do Trump— Both Psychically And Electorally?

I had a boss once who was very much like Trump— around the same age. Also born and raised in New York City, SS— we’ll call that— couldn’t wait to hire Roy Cohn as his attorney and to hang out in the crowd the admired him. In the nearly half century I knew him, among the diagnoses one would make about him and Trump— remember, I only ever took 2 psych courses— included

• Narcissistic personality disorder- basically a need for admiration, lack of empathy and grandiosity

• Antisocial personality disorder- manipulativeness, deceitfulness and a disregard for the rights of others

• Sociopathy- superficial charm melded with a lack of remorse or guilt

• Paranoia- a tendency to always feel the system was rigged against him and that as well as he was doing in life, he should be doing much better

• Histrionic personality disorder- dramatic flair, exaggerated emotions, attention-seeking behavior

• Machievellianism- cunning, manipulation, focus on personal gain irrespective ethics and morality

  
  

But the thing that stands out most for me is how both Trump and SS learned the illusory truth effect from Cohn, sometimes called gaslighting,  a form of manipulation where the manipulator attempts to make someone question their own perception, memory or reality.

At one point, Trump tried convincing his followers— and her millions of fans— that Taylor Swift had endorsed him. That was never going to happen but he thought by saying so, he would make people think it had. Tuesday night, Swift left no doubt where she stands on her preference for the election. She has 283 million followers on Instagram. (Remember, in 2020, Trump only had 74,223,975 votes.) In the first 13 hours since she put this up, it had been liked by 8,754,543 followers. Trump’s response on Fox & Friends was that her fans would abandon her: “I was not a Taylor Swift fan… She’s a very liberal person, she always seems to endorse a Democrat and she will probably pay the price for that in the market.” [That was more classic Trump gaslighting.]

Taylor Swift has 3 cats. Would JD Vance eat all 3?

One of the vicious spokespersons Trump has working for him— failed New Hampshire congressional candidate Karoline Leavitt— had a sour grapes approach to the endorsement: “This is further evidence that the Democrat party has unfortunately become a party of the wealthy elites. There’s many Swifties for Trump out there in America.” 

Some of Swift’s fanbase had already started mobilising for Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched in late August, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Helen Sullivan reported that “In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland tried to establish the correlation, if any, between celebrity endorsements and votes. They used Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama ahead of the 2008 Democrat primary to examine whether it had any effect on the polls. The researchers concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement was worth about a million votes for Obama, who beat his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton, by about 270,000 votes in the states used in the sample… An October 2023 Fox News poll found that 55% of voters overall, including 68% of Democrats, said they had a favourable view of Swift. Republicans were divided, with 43% having a favourable opinion and 45% an unfavourable one. Cayce Myers, a professor of public relations at Virginia Tech, said Swift’s endorsement may have an impact on the election because it may encourage younger Gen Z fans to vote. Myers added that while celebrity endorsements do not necessarily translate into meaningful turnout, Swift’s endorsement was going out to a particularly large fanbase, and was focused on women’s rights, an issue that favours Democrats.”

Nikki McCann Ramirez reported that “While Trump attempted to shrug off the endorsement, for months now the former president has been fixated on the possibility that the influential superstar would publicly endorse President Joe Biden, and later Harris. In January, allies close to the former president told Rolling Stone that Trump was planning a “holy war” against Swift should she endorse any of his 2024 rivals, and privately boasted that he was “more popular” than the entertainer. At the time, the singer was at the center of a culture-war firestorm surrounding her relationship with Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce. Prominent allies of the former president went so far as to suggest that the 2023 NFL season had been rigged for the Chiefs to facilitate an endorsement of Biden by Swift… The Trump campaign has attempted to fake its way into giving the impression that Swift might support him. Last month, the former president shared a collage of AI-generated images purporting to show young women in ‘Swifties for Trump’ shirts. ‘I accept!’ Trump wrote in the caption. The former president later claimed that he didn’t ‘know anything about them other than somebody else generated them. I didn’t generate them.’ The incident was apparently the last straw for Swift, who on Tuesday night wrote that she had been ‘made aware that AI of me falsely endorsing Donald Trump’spresidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers 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. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Yesterday, NPR reported that Taylor Swift’s endorsement brought over 300,000 visitors to Vote.gov— in less than 12 hours. And that was before the Marquette Law Scool poll reported that Kamala is now leading Trump in Wisconsin 52-48%. Let's hope there are lots of Swifties in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. That could make all the difference in the world. And, by the way, 60 million people watched the debate Tuesday night and saw Kamala break poor old Trump. Peter Wehner: “The night, for Harris supporters, went better than even the most optimistic among them could have hoped. For Trump supporters, it was not just a defeat but a public humiliation, the crushing comeuppance they probably secretly feared might one day arrive but, until now, never quite had. What Harris appeared to understand, better than anyone else who has debated Trump, is that the key to defeating him is to trigger him psychologically. She did it by repeatedly calling him “weak,” mocking him, acting bemused by him, and literally laughing at him. As he lost control of events, Trump became enraged, his voice bellowing into an empty room, his face not just orange but nearly fluorescent. Trump realized that his opponent— and not just any opponent, but a woman of color— was dominating him. And so even as Trump exploded, he was, like a dying supernova, shrinking before our eyes… [A]fter a closing statement in which Trump referred to America as ‘a failing nation,’ he exited the stage, into the shadows, a broken man atop a broken campaign.”

Miles Klee reported that this monstrosity threatened to impregnate Swift after she endorsed Kamala instead of the fellow monstrosity he backs. “Fine Taylor,” the ugly and increasingly deranged monstrosity tweeted, “you win… I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” 

Klee wrote that Musk “appeared to be tickled, however, by the notion that the election could come down to an allegiance to either him or Swift. Replying to a tweet from an account declaring, ‘Oh my God, this has really become an Elon vs Taylor Swift election now,’ he posted his favorite emoji, the laugh-crying face. It was an hour later that Musk, whose recreational drug use and at times erratic behavior have worried the leadership at his companies, tweeted his line about impregnating Swift and protecting her cats. An hour after that, it had about 50,000 likes, along with almost 10,000 replies, alternating between disgust and approval. Neither Swift nor her boyfriend, NFL star and three-time Super Bowl winner Travis Kelce, have responded to the overture.”