Taylor Swift performs during The Eras Tour at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on Aug. 7, 2023.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
Taylor Swift must have had her finger – which has more talent in it than Donald Trump has in his entire body – hovering over the “post” button on her device throughout that whole fertilizer show of a debate Tuesday night, just waiting for it to end in order to capitalize on the moment with her endorsement of Kamala Harris.
It’s me, hi.
Okay, Ms. Swift almost certainly has people to handle her social-media posts for her, but it’s a nice image to hold in your head, no? And while she indicated on Instagram that she had watched the debate, she had no doubt planned this long before Ms. Harris embarrassed Mr. Trump by drawing out his nuttiness for all to see for more than 90 bonkers minutes.
Some Republicans might have crazily proclaimed victory, but anyone with a brain could see that Mr. Trump didn’t just look weak, but crazy. Ms. Swift definitely has one of those – a brain, highly functioning – and a very powerful voice. Which she is using for good.
She has turned the spotlight on herself during big moments before – announcing her album The Tortured Poets Department during her Grammy Awards acceptance speech, notably, earlier this year. But hey: If she wants to disguise her covert narcissism as altruism, we’ll take it. The stakes are very high.
Tuesday’s debate crystallized how unfit Mr. Trump is to lead, with his strange remarks about prisoners and, separately, pets: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said, referring to a claim made without evidence about migrants. He also bizarrely said that Ms. Harris wants “to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
Karma is a self-described “childless cat lady” posting glowingly about Tim Walz, vice-presidential opponent to the cat-lady-insult originator J.D. Vance, and about the woman Mr. Trump couldn’t even look at Tuesday night, Ms. Harris. “She fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Ms. Swift wrote, accompanied by a photo with her ragdoll cat, Benjamin Button. The cat’s face seemed to bear a resemblance to Ms. Harris’s are-you-kidding-me-with-this? expression as she listened to Mr. Trump go on about the execution of newborn babies and the like.
The post was more important than any lyric Ms. Swift has written. Celebrity endorsements might be a dime a dozen, but, to mix a couple of metaphors, this was the holy grail of recommendations, made by arguably the world’s most famous pop-culture figure – one with an enormous following (283 million on Instagram) and influence. She says vote; Swifties say, “for whom?”
This could have real consequences. As of 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday, there had been 306,422 visitors to vote.gov that arrived through Ms. Swift’s URL, the organization told The Globe and Mail.
While these will not necessarily lead to registrations, consider that just over a year ago, when Ms. Swift urged her Instagram followers to register to vote and directed them to the non-partisan site vote.org, it recorded more than 35,000 new registrations afterward.
In the 2016 contest between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, the issue of gender felt very much in play. Do you want a man or a woman, a Republican or a Democrat, running the country? This time, gender feels like less of an issue than sanity and stability, even if a win for Ms. Harris would be historic. For real this time (please God).
(Reproductive rights, which should be an issue that everyone cares about, are obviously important to female voters this time around, even if women don’t necessarily want to relitigate a gender election.)
Still, Ms. Swift endorsing Ms. Harris immediately after a debate that she so clearly dominated with intellect and controlled-but-visible disdain toward this (long pause) former president – was a one-two punch delivered by strong women for their country (and the world, which would be subjected to Mr. Trump’s whims should he win in November).
Mr. Trump seems particularly triggered by strong women. As former RNC chairman Michael Steele said on Inside with Jen Psaki afterward: “There’s nothing worse than a pissed bigot on stage with a woman he can’t control.”
Here’s what might actually be worse: Elon Musk’s post on the powerful social-media site he unfortunately owns, after Ms. Swift’s endorsement. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” (Ellipses and extreme creepiness all his.)
Here’s what would definitely be worse: Mr. Trump winning in November.
This is Kamala Harris’s era. We are ready for it.