Why Trump Fans Are Going Crazy About Taylor Swift Protesters block access to the destroyed city of Machu Picchu in Peru

In the 1960s, a seemingly innocent comment by John Lennon sparked mass hysteria among American evangelicals. The Beatles were currently more popular than Jesus, Lennon had jokingly declared, never in his wildest dreams thinking of what he had caused. The outrage of Christian preachers knew no bounds over this alleged blasphemy, religious fanatics destroyed the British rock band’s albums en masse and for a time the US was turned upside down.

Today, Taylor Swift proves that pop stars are still capable of driving people crazy. She doesn’t mess with Christians, doesn’t compare herself to Mary, Mary Magdalene or any other figure from the Bible. Actually, she has done nothing – and yet at least the conservative part of America is on its head again. And it happened like this:

Swift has been dating Travis Kelce, a football star who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, for some time now. This team participates in the Superbowl, the grand finale of the American football season. For Trump fans, the outcome of this final has already been determined. For example, Vivek Ramaswamy – who once entered the presidential race as Trump’s rival and is now his most modest admirer – posted on social media: “I wonder who will win the Superbowl next month. And I wonder if there will be official support for this artificially boosted couple’s presidential election.”

Ramaswamy may have the best chance to replace Ted Cruz as America’s most annoying politician. But what exactly does he mean by this message? He insinuates that not only was the 2020 presidential election rigged, but that the outcome of the upcoming Superbowl was already predetermined – this time by the Pentagon – and that Joe Biden was once again the big winner of this fraud.

Of course, this statement goes beyond good and evil. When it comes to sports, the Chiefs are like the Bayern Munich of American soccer. They’ve been to four of the last five Super Bowls, they’re the reigning champions, and this all happened before Swift and Kelce became a couple. On the political side, the Pentagon may have a few more pressing problems to solve right now than determining the outcome of a football game.

The obvious idiocy of this conspiracy theory has not stopped the conservative media from spreading it more and more widely. Neither the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine nor a new looming government shutdown are currently keeping journalists from Fox News, Newsmax and Breitbart busy. Rather, it’s the new dream couple Swift/Kelce and their relationship with Biden.

On Fox News, Jesse Waters, who has little chance of replacing Tucker Carlson as America’s most annoying host, said: “Ever wonder how she (Swift) got so big? Well, about four years ago, at a NATO meeting , the Pentagon’s psychology department put forward the idea of ​​how we could take advantage of Taylor Swift.”

There have been a number of similar statements from the Trump camp, statements that make Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Jewish laser beams from space” theory seem downright sensible, but let’s leave that alone. The only thing I can partially understand in this hysteria is the fear of Swift.

She is a force and has 279 million followers on Instagram alone who actually listen to her. About a fifth of them say they will blindly follow their voting recommendations. It’s just stupid that a large part of them are still too young to even participate in the elections.

Taylor Swift also speaks out more often about political topics. In 2018, she voted for the Democrats in the state of Tennessee, where she owns two houses. In 2020, she supported Joe Biden. Although her roots are in country music – a style that is not exactly gay-dominated – she has also repeatedly supported the LGBTQ community.

This is not well received by all football fans. This sport is considered one of the last bastions of machismo. Many men are not at all happy that Swift gets more attention than the game itself when they attend a Chiefs game. As Candace Buckner rightly notes in the Washington Post, “Fans who want to celebrate a new champion, and primitives, who feel uncomfortable when all the attention is focused on a woman in a men’s league, who has formed an unholy alliance.”

Everything is set for mass hysteria in the Trump camp. One of them can no longer be missing. Elon Musk responded to Ramaswamy’s justification post this way: “That’s exactly how it is.”