It’s a Sunday throughout soccer season, so that is normally the place we’d be telling you about singer Taylor Swift’s arrival at a soccer stadium, the place she’ll ascend to a glassed-in field above the seats to observe her boyfriend, Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce, play. And all that did certainly occur this afternoon: Swift arrived at Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs’ Kansas Metropolis, Missouri residence, over an hour earlier than the sport’s 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff in opposition to the Cincinnati Bengals, smiling serenely as she walked by the tunnel in a vintage-look, outsized Chiefs t-shirt worn as a costume and Mr. and Mrs. Smith-worthy thigh-high boots. Simply her placid expression, you’d by no means guess that, in the identical means that he has allegedly inspired lethal violence in opposition to so many different individuals (together with his personal vice-president), GOP nominee for president Donald Trump made clear his animus towards Taylor Swift.
It’s a transfer that has been constructing for months. Early in 2024, Trump expressed issues that Swift wouldn’t be endorsing him shortly after reportedly crowing that he believed he was extra widespread than the billionaire musician. Seemingly conscious of the writing on the wall (in any case, Swift endorsed President Joe Biden within the 2020 election), Trump promoted AI-generated images of Swift that falsely steered she supported his marketing campaign. She’s been residing in his head, rent-free, for months, which will need to have been fairly galling for a landlord identified for his alleged love of evictions.
Trump’s “long-running preoccupation” (as the New York Times puts it) with Swift constructed up steam after she introduced—in a social media publish that doesn’t as soon as point out Trump by title—that she’d be voting for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election. The announcement spurred a wave of donations for Harris, in addition to a seemingly veiled menace from Trump that Swift “would pay a value for it.”
It’s unclear what that value may be, as Swift followers who provided to alleviate Trump-loving Eras Tour ticket holders of their seats largely got here up empty-handed, at the same time as her tour gears up for a spin by the red-leaning states of Florida, Louisiana, and Indiana in October and early November.
It’s doubtless that when Swift and her workforce have been plotting these dates by what’s arguably MAGA territory, they didn’t give it a second thought. In spite of everything, Swift is able to sustaining relationships with individuals who may not share her politics, as evidenced by her nice public exchanges with rumored Trump supporter Brittany Mahomes, who’s married to Kelce’s good friend and Kansas Metropolis Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
However whereas Mahomes seems content material to respect Swift’s beliefs, Trump appears much less versatile. In a flurry of posts to his social media platform, Reality Social, Trump announced, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Petulant? Positive. Unhinged? Most likely! But in addition harmful, argues of us like former NYT columnist and Veep and Succession producer Frank Wealthy.
In response to Trump’s outburst, Rich noted that Swift had confronted terrorist threads overseas, a reference to a thwarted plan for violence throughout her reveals in Vienna, Austria. Claiming that Trump and operating mate JD Vance are “desirous to incite home terrorism,” Wealthy factors out that Swift might be on tour in Trump nation till simply days earlier than the election. The connection, Wealthy appears to recommend, is evident.
Only a speculation, positive, however one which appears bolstered by the numerous occasions previously Trump has seemingly used obscure language to stoke the menacing flames of his following. By concentrating on Swift with a phrase as robust as “hate,” it’s exhausting to learn his all-caps sentence as something apart from a menace.
Shortly after phrase got here from West Palm Seashore, Florida, that Secret Service brokers opened fireplace close to Trump’s golf membership following “what seems to be an tried assassination,” the Chiefs and Bengals kicked off the second sport within the 2024-2025 NFL season. On condition that, in addition to Trump’s remarks earlier immediately, Swift’s workforce might be urging her to decrease her profile till this weird, confounding period of tried intimidation involves an finish.
However for now, she’s nonetheless there (albeit, beneath more and more tighter safety), cheering from the stands at America’s hottest sport. She hasn’t addressed Trump’s remarks, neither is she more likely to, if the remarks she made weeks after the Vienna plot are any indication.
“Let me be very clear: I’m not going to talk about one thing publicly if I feel doing so may provoke those that would wish to hurt the followers who come to my reveals,” she stated then. “In circumstances like this one, ‘silence’ is definitely displaying restraint, and ready to specific your self at a time when it’s proper to.”
