After Trump Claimed Fake Taylor Swift Endorsement, Her Fans Make Real Push for Harris (NY Times/no paywall)

Thousands of the musician’s ardent followers are working to get out the vote and raise money for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign.



The real Taylor Swift has not offered an endorsement of any candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Credit...Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

By Tim Balk
Aug. 30, 2024

Nine days after former President Donald J. Trump falsely claimed to accept an endorsement from the pop superstar Taylor Swift, thousands of Swift fans, including some high-profile cultural and political figures, gathered on a video call with the goal of ensuring his defeat. They shared their favorite Swift songs. They quoted their favorite Swift lines. And then they assailed Mr. Trump’s political agenda as a threat to women.

One fan, the singer Carole King, sang Ms. Swift’s song “Shake It Off.” Another, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, described Mr. Trump as a bully who was “trying to claw us back into the dark days.” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who attended two concerts on Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour, made a series of jokes at Mr. Trump’s expense that played on the singer’s lyrics.

They all were gathered on Tuesday under the banner of Swifties for Kamala, a group that is not officially affiliated with Vice President Kamala Harris or Ms. Swift — who has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the election — but that is seeking to deploy the intensity of Ms. Swift’s vast fan base in support of Ms. Harris’s bid for the White House.

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The early returns from the group’s organizing call on Tuesday — which lasted two hours and was joined by about 34,000 people across Zoom, YouTube and TikTok — have been promising, the group said on Friday: $130,000 raised for the Harris campaign over four days. But organizers hope the effort will have a potentially more powerful effect, reminding young people in swing states to register to vote. “Swifties just never do anything small,” Irene Kim, 29, another founder of the group, said in an interview on Friday.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/trump-taylor-swift-fans-endorsement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HE4.FLyi.FQ1A-3pFVe1N&smid=url-share
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