It’s a Sunday during football season, so this is usually where we’d be telling you about singer Taylor Swift’s arrival at a football stadium, where she’ll ascend to a glassed-in box above the seats to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, play. And all that did indeed happen this afternoon: Swift arrived at Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs’ Kansas City, Missouri home, over an hour before the game’s 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff against the Cincinnati Bengals, smiling serenely as she walked through the tunnel in a vintage-look, oversized Chiefs t-shirt worn as a dress and Mr. and Mrs. Smith-worthy thigh-high boots. Just looking at her placid expression, you’d never guess that, in the same way that he has allegedly encouraged deadly violence against so many other people (including his own vice-president), GOP nominee for president Donald Trump made clear his animus toward Taylor Swift.
It’s a move that has been building for months. Early in 2024, Trump expressed concerns that Swift would not be endorsing him shortly after reportedly crowing that he believed he was more popular than the billionaire musician. Seemingly aware of the writing on the wall (after all, Swift endorsed President Joe Biden in the 2020 election), Trump promoted AI-generated images of Swift that falsely suggested she supported his campaign. She’s been living in his head, rent-free, for months, which must have been quite galling for a landlord known for his alleged love of evictions.
Taylor Swift arrives at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium prior to a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals on September 15, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Trump’s “long-running preoccupation” (as the New York Times puts it) with Swift built up steam after she announced—in a social media post that does not once mention Trump by name—that she’d be voting for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The announcement spurred a wave of donations for Harris, as well as a seemingly veiled threat from Trump that Swift “would pay a price for it.”
It’s unclear what that price might be, as Swift fans who offered to relieve Trump-loving Eras Tour ticket holders of their seats largely came up empty-handed, even as her tour gears up for a spin through the red-leaning states of Florida, Louisiana, and Indiana in October and early November.
Taylor Swift arrives at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium prior to a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals on September 15, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
It’s likely that when Swift and her team were plotting those dates through what’s arguably MAGA territory, they didn’t give it a second thought. After all, Swift is capable of maintaining relationships with people who might not share her politics, as evidenced by her pleasant public exchanges with rumored Trump supporter Brittany Mahomes, who is married to Kelce’s friend and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
But while Mahomes appears content to respect Swift’s beliefs, Trump seems less flexible. In a flurry of posts to his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump announced, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Petulant? Sure. Unhinged? Probably! But also dangerous, argues folks like former NYT columnist and Veep and Succession producer Frank Rich.
In response to Trump’s outburst, Rich noted that Swift had faced terrorist threads abroad, a reference to a thwarted plan for violence during her shows in Vienna, Austria. Claiming that Trump and running mate JD Vance are “eager to incite domestic terrorism,” Rich points out that Swift will be on tour in Trump country until just days before the election. The connection, Rich seems to suggest, is clear.
Just a hypothesis, sure, but one that seems bolstered by the many times in the past Trump has seemingly used vague language to stoke the menacing flames of his following. By targeting Swift with a word as strong as “hate,” it’s hard to read his all-caps sentence as anything other than a threat.
Shortly after word came from West Palm Beach, Florida, that Secret Service agents opened fire near Trump’s golf club following “what appears to be an attempted assassination,” the Chiefs and Bengals kicked off the second game in the 2024-2025 NFL season. Given that, as well as Trump’s remarks earlier today, Swift’s team is probably urging her to lower her profile until this bizarre, confounding era of attempted intimidation comes to an end.
But for now, she’s still there (albeit, under increasingly tighter security), cheering from the stands at America’s most popular sport. She hasn’t addressed Trump’s remarks, nor is she likely to, if the remarks she made weeks after the Vienna plot are any indication.
“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she said then. “In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 10:26:00
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