Donald Trump wants his supporters to believe that pop star Taylor Swift is advocating for the red vote. But that may just be one of his wildest dreams.
“I accept!” the former president posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday. He added a collage of images from around the internet – some of which appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence – showing the TIME Person of the Year dressed as Uncle Sam with the words “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump,” as well as numerous Swift fans expressing their support for the Republican presidential candidate.
Taylor Swift has not yet officially endorsed any candidate for the 2024 election, although she previously supported the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020 and criticized Trump for “fanning the fires of white supremacy and racism” and defunding the U.S. Postal Service in 2020. She described the service as a “blatant fraud that puts the lives of millions of Americans at risk to stay in power.”
TIME has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on a possible endorsement of Swift, as the Democratic Party begins its convention in Chicago this week, where numerous celebrities will make speeches and appearances in support of the Harris-Waltz campaign team.
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At least one so-called “Swiftie for Trump” – pictured twice in Trump’s post – is real. According to Wisconsin Right Now, 19-year-old Jenna Piwowarczyk was seen at a Trump rally in Wisconsin in June wearing the slogan on a homemade white T-shirt.
However, there is no evidence that a significant number of Swift fans support the Republican candidate: an unofficial “Swifties for Trump” account on X (created in July) has fewer than 4,000 followers, while an unofficial “Swifties 4 Kamala” account, also created in July, has over 60,000 followers on X and over 100,000 on TikTok.
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Trump’s Truth Social post also included a screenshot of a post by the conservative account Amuse that showed apparent AI-generated images of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts, accompanied by a caption marked “satire” saying Swifties “turn to Trump” after the singer’s Vienna concert was canceled amid fears of a jihadist terrorist attack. The original post on X confirms in its alt text of the image: “There is no Swifties For Trump movement – but there should be.”
In another Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump again shared a TikTok video of a woman claiming that Swifties are now “protesting for Trump” because of the same terrorist attack.
Trump has spoken about Swift before and Ramin Setoodeh, the author of “Apprentice in Wonderland”: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett led America through the looking glass“I’ve heard she’s very talented” and “I think she’s very, very beautiful – unusually beautiful.” As for Swift’s political views, Trump is quoted in the same book as saying, “I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump” – although he expressed some skepticism about this, reportedly asking, “She’s really liberal? This isn’t a show? I’m surprised a country star can be successful if she’s liberal.”
Experts warn of the dangers of disinformation in politics, which can be exacerbated by new technologies. Trump recently shared the Swift-related, AI-generated images after he and billionaire Elon Musk shared an AI-altered video of them dancing on X last week after the two hosted a widely viewed livestream together on the Musk-owned social media platform.
