As if Taylor Swift didn’t have enough on her plate with returning to the Eras Tour after a terrifying foiled terrorist ploy, now Donald Trump is using fake AI images to feign her endorsement of his presidential campaign.
The Republican candidate shared the ridiculous designs on Truth Social, including one of Swift as a version of Uncle Sam in the famous U.S. Army recruitment poster, with the slogan “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.” The post also showed fake images of Trump-supporting Swifties, and was captioned by the 78-year-old with “I accept.”
Now, Taylor Swift isn’t exactly known for being politically outspoken, but she’s always expressed her distaste for Trump’s politics over the years.
In 2020, the multiple Grammy-winning singer endorsed Joe Biden’s candidacy and, as the most famous woman on the planet, with a huge pull among the young voter demographic, the country has been anxiously waiting for her to do the same for Kamala Harris. Has Trump just given her the final push to finally have her say with these egregious deepfakes?
Has Taylor Swift said anything about Trump’s AI propaganda?
No. The musician has not made any public statements about Trump’s use of her likeness to promote his campaign. Swift might sing about being a little too lawsuit-happy in the “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” track off of her latest album, but there have not been any reports about her suing the former president, either.
This isn’t the first time Swift has had to deal with her face and name being abused. Who can forget Kanye West’s “Famous” music video from 2016 where he sleeps next to a creepily faithful naked model of the Pennsylvania native? More recently, in January 2024, disturbing pornographic deepfakes of Swift also made the rounds online, forcing Elon Musk to temporarily block all searches of her name on X until the issue was resolved. The episode also led to the U.S. Senate introducing a bill “that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence,” per The Guardian.
Trump’s attempt might not be sexual in nature, but it does bring Swift’s fans into the mix, whom she tends to be very protective of. The ever-growing fanbase has been targeted repeatedly in recent months following the early-August terrorist threat in Vienna, as well as the Southport, U.K. knife attack in late July on a group of young fans enjoying a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class, which proved fatal to three young children. Part of the computer-generated images shared by Trump claimed fans, wearing “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts, had turned their favor towards the conservative candidate after these attacks.
What’s more concerning is that the men arrested for these incidents were all young adults who had been radicalized online, likely by similarly fake images and news. Although Swift issued a statement about the Southport attack, sending her love to the victims and their families, she has remained silent about the Vienna situation. Some fans who felt they were robbed of the show of a lifetime have criticized her silence, but one can easily speculate that it could be a preventive choice while the tour is still taking place, or some kind of legal constraint tied to the ongoing investigation.
In this same vein, we might not see Swift take action or make any kind of comment about this Trump debacle, or the U.S. election in general, as long as she and her fans’ safety is this exposed, and especially as she continues to throw concerts for tens of thousands of people every weekend.