It was the embrace that launched a thousand tweets: on Sunday, Taylor Swift hugged Brittany Mahomes – the spouse of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes – at the US Open. A photograph of the hug instantly had tongues wagging.
In case you’re not Extraordinarily On-line, the one factor that may stand out from the innocuous-seeming hug photograph is that Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce (additionally within the photograph) has horrendous style in hats. The broader context, nevertheless, is Mahomes’s hyperlink to Donald Trump. Final week the previous president thanked Mahomes for “strongly defending me” after she appreciated considered one of his Instagram posts again in August. That put up, titled “The 2024 GOP Platform”, outlined what a second Trump time period would include – issues resembling “the most important deportation operation in American historical past”. Mahomes didn’t admire folks criticising her for liking the put up (which she appears to have later unliked), calling them “haters” with “deep-rooted points … from childhood”.
This drama issues as a result of Swift is without doubt one of the most influential folks on the planet. There was intense hypothesis about whether or not the pop star will endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle. Within the absence of any such endorsement, folks have been scrutinising her actions for clues about her political leanings. Hugging Mahomes after her Trump controversy? Nicely, that’s been taken by some as an indication that Taylor is Group Trump.
The Mahomes hug isn’t the one proof persons are citing to recommend Swift, who endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, may be leaning to the precise now. There’s additionally the actual fact she was tight-lipped when Trump just lately shared a bunch of AI-generated photographs on his Fact Social platform that implied Swift and her followers had been endorsing him. “The Swifties for Trump motion is actual!” the put up, initially created by a murky rightwing non-profit, learn. “I settle for!” Trump wrote above the faux photographs.
A presidential candidate utilizing your picture with out your consent to say you assist his racist and regressive views is a giant deal. In case you suppose his views are abhorrent, you’d need to publicly distance your self from him, proper? There are scores of well-known musicians, from Céline Dion to Beyoncé, who’ve made it very public that they don’t need Trump utilizing their music at rallies. “Don’t even consider using my music, you fascists,” Jack White mentioned final month, after a Trump aide used a White Stripes tune in a web-based video. White added that he would sue the Trump marketing campaign. In case you’re indignant a person like Trump is associating himself with you, then that’s the way you act. In the meantime, numerous media shops reported that Swift’s “spokesperson didn’t return a number of messages searching for remark” after Trump posted the faux endorsement photographs.
To be clear: I don’t suppose Swift is a secret Trump supporter. She’s been vital of him up to now, in spite of everything. However it could’t be confused sufficient that Swift isn’t a billionaire simply because she sings catchy songs. She’s a billionaire as a result of she is an excellent businesswoman who exerts meticulous management over her private model. All the pieces she does is intentional, finished with the data that her fanbase will scrutinise and try to decode even essentially the most banal motion prefer it’s the Rosetta Stone. One imagines the explanation her spokesperson didn’t remark in regards to the faux Trump photographs wasn’t that they had been too busy, it was that they’d determined silence was the savviest alternative.
Swift might have endorsed Biden-Harris in 2020, however that was a really totally different time. After the George Floyd protests, “Manufacturers, which frequently stay silent in relation to social justice points, started talking out,” a 2021 AdAge article famous. They did so as a result of they knew that being in tune with the zeitgeist was good for his or her enterprise. Now corporations are being focused by the precise with boycotts and harassment in the event that they align with progressive causes. That bullying has labored: business specialists have warned of a worrying development of manufacturers taking important steps again from range and sustainability initiatives. Swift is without doubt one of the greatest manufacturers there may be; it’s solely pure she’s shying away from politics.
That mentioned, I hope Swift proves me fallacious and speaks up this election cycle. We dwell in a world the place the whole lot is political. Swift isn’t avoiding politics by staying quiet: her silence speaks louder than phrases.
