For a winner, Donald Trump sure loses a lot.
He’s failed to win the popular vote every time he’s run for president, which might explain why he loves the Republican primaries so much: he’s guaranteed to come out on top, as the vast majority of American Conservatives are willing to sniff his farts and tell him it smells like roses.
If he’d have just stuck to mindlessly repeating his catchphrase on The Apprentice, he might very well still be relatively well liked by most people who didn’t know anything about his long history of thieving and sexual assault. Yet, his full-throated embrace of Birtherism a decade and a half ago has led him to the center of a political storm, where all of his armor has been stripped away. And what’s left is a pretty sad husk of a man who picks fights with anything and everything he can.
His latest doomed to fail endeavor is taking on the cultural behemoth that is Taylor Swift. Normally Trump’s targets have at least angered him in some way, but the pop sensation has caught his ire simply because she is too popular.
Now, by pretty much every conceivable metric, Taylor is more popular than Trump. Swift has more social media followers than he does, and even though some people find her omnipresence annoying, she hasn’t garnered billions in donations for causes against her. Additionally, as per Business Insider, a massive 53% of U.S adults consider themselves Swift fans, with around 45% of that number falling under a conservative ideological banner. But the truth has never gotten in the way of a Trump tantrum before, so we doubt it will now.
Swift recently became the center of a MAGA conspiracy because her current partner has the audacity to play for the Kansas City Chiefs, an NFL team who will be appearing in this year’s Super Bowl. Tinfoil hat wearing right wingers believe that the NFL has fixed the game so that the Chiefs would make it to the showpiece end-of-season championship, thus giving Swift a platform to denounce Trump and throw her considerable influence behind Joe Biden.
Never mind that NFL bosses are incredibly wealthy, and many of them supported and even funded Trump, or that the most Swift has ever said about politics is that people should get out and vote. But, much like their leader, MAGA fans aren’t exactly known for their coherence of thought.
Swift’s fanbase are probably one of the most terrifying hiveminds online, and while the MAGA side of the web has given us some of the worst creations of internet culture, they are vastly outnumbered here. Swift’s relatively anodyne music is in stark contrast to the way her fans obsess over her, with those who have been mildly critical of the singer when it comes to things like her private jet use getting all sorts of grim reactions, including death threats. Trump should be thankful for his Secret Service detail, really.
This battle with Swift (who, like a true big name, doesn’t seem to have said anything about the former president, making this so-called feud very one-sided) caps off a terrible couple of weeks for Trump with regards to women. He made his political name as a bully, but he’s recently found out that having a big mouth can cost.
Last week, the writer E. Jean Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in damages by a judge over claims Trump has continued to defame her. He originally had to pay a fraction of that, but whatever he’s spent the last few decades taking has melted his brain so much he seems unable to stop himself from talking, even in a courtroom.
And that’s not all: Uncle Tom for the internet age Nikki Haley might be getting absolutely battered by Trump in the Republican primaries, but her dogged determination to hold on in the face of a cheeto-colored onslaught seems to be riling up the ex-President, even as he cruises to victory. This is further alienating the less-extreme Republicans, who might be smaller in number than their MAGA counterparts, but definitely have more money to put towards donations.
So, will Trump learn to sit back and be quiet? If he had, he wouldn’t be facing countless fines and prison time for treason, and might have even managed a second term in 2020. But, much like the scorpion that stings the frog, and a baby that can’t control its bowels, it’s in his nature to try and bully everyone around him, especially women. We don’t foresee that stopping any time soon, but at least he’s facing consequences for it.