It may not seem like it given the current narrative ethos, but it’s possible to be a Taylor Swift fan and plan to vote for Trump. Swift is the top-selling recording artist globally. Her records reach countless fans. Her latest tour was an instant sell out, with fans traversing the world to catch her in stadiums spanning continents. She wasn’t always political, but since she’s taken up more left-leaning positions, as behooves a star of her stature, conservatives have at times felt shut out from her music. Whether this is due to a feeling of being unable to speak freely among the other Swifties, or because it’s hard to consume art that at times goes against your values, the fact is that it hasn’t been easy to be a Swiftie and a conservative.
Enter Swifties for Trump, a group of young women, unaffiliated, who love Swift, support Trump for president, and don’t care who knows it. The Post Millennial caught up with a few of these fans who are unabashed in proclaiming their values and their fandom.
Fandoms can be very personal things. We are drawn to certain artists and their work because it speaks to something deep and true within us. And for every era in American culture, there have been pop icons who capture the ethos of that moment. In America, right now, one of those icons is Taylor Swift, and like any good American culture phenomenon, she has become global.
Unlike other times in American life, however, our pop icons are basically required to become mouthpieces for political ideas, and the Democrat Party has almost secured a monopoly among the top earning, top performing recording artists.
“I think it’s also important to note that Taylor Swift now is a musical legend, icon, status of the likes of Prince, Michael Jackson. People will laugh, that’s fine. The Eras tour is one of the now number one best selling tours of all time,” Alex Clark, a Swiftie for Trump and host of a TPUSA show, said to The Post Millennial. She also said the idea that Swift fans are all left leaning is basically insane.
“So are there conservative Taylor Swift fans?” Alex asked. “Of course, because we’re talking about somebody that has some of the biggest mass appeal as an artist that we’ve had in decades. So of course, there are bound to be people with all different types of religious views, political views.”
“That is why it has aggravated me the last six months to see conservative commentators ragging so hard on her and her fans,” Alex said. And yes, there was a huge blowback against Swift and her young women fans when it seemed like Swift might lend her cred to the Democrat’s political campaign. She hasn’t so far.
“There are tons of people who are able to separate her politics from her art and enjoy her,” Alex said, “and I think conservatives struggle a lot with that.” But while Swift herself may speak to leftist political ideas, her art tells a different story. Swift brings beauty and femininity to her music, performances, and her fans. “It’s just as much bringing beauty back,” Alex said, “and appreciating beauty.” She recommends that her Republican friends and colleagues “need to be the party that is promoting things that are beautiful and true in art, because obviously the left is destroying everything that is beautiful.”
Alex Clark and Morgonn McMichael at Taylor Swift’s Era’s tour in Los Angeles, 2023
For Jenna Piwowarczyk, who began the public trend by creating and wearing a Swifties for Trump t-shirt, this was a huge part of her impulse. “The original reason I created the Swifties for Trump shirt was exactly that,” she said. “I’m a huge Ben Shapiro fan. I’m super heavily involved, and I’m from Wisconsin. So, Wisconsin politics, every conservative I knew hated on Taylor, made fun of her fans, called us insane, and, you know, crazy fangirls. And I was tired of it, because Taylor Swift fans make up 50% of the United States population.”
“We are discouraging young women,” she continued. “That’s the demographic where we struggle the most. We definitely need young women, and we are actively pushing them away by making fun of their role model and making fun of someone who has a good business model.”
Debra Lea, a conservative political commentator from New York City, agreed, noting that she’d put in “years making conservatives cool again, just for them to sh*t on Taylor Swift and make us all the way back down to the bottom. I was like, ‘Come on, guys, people, you’re hating on a woman who’s finally in love, then she’ll stop writing breakup songs, you should be rooting for her to get married instead of just— that’s like a whole anti women thing, that’s just like an extra level to the right side of politics.”
Morgonn agreed, saying “I feel like that’s where conservative commentators fail, is they harp so much on ‘Oh, she has bad taste in men. She’s always writing these breakup songs. She’s a horrible role model for women.’ When in reality, when you look at her discography, there’s so much more complexity to her albums than just having a bunch of breakup songs. When you look at this generation, we’ve grown up with Taylor Swift and watched her, and so now you have her fan base being instead of young, eight year olds, we’re in our 20s and our 30s, some even in their 40s, and so they’re rooting for Taylor to get married and have kids, and I think it will push our generation to want that more.”
“So why aren’t conservative commentators cheering for her?” She continued. “Saying, ‘yes, Taylor, we’re proud, like, we want you to get married and have kids. That’s exactly what our message is, and that we push is like, get married, have kids. You know, she’s in her 30s, get married, have kids. So I don’t know why people are always like nagging on her relationship with Travis Kelce, when it seems to be, honestly, the most conservative, wholesome relationship that there can be, being A-list celebrities.”
“Travis is a manly man, right?” Jenna said. “He’s a respectful, big grr football player, and Taylor’s a very feminine, motherly, caring, nurturing woman, like it just is like a perfect, perfect marriage, perfect ideal, you know, gender roles, you know, basic, conservative, traditional family. It looks perfect.”
In 2020, Debra made a video titled “When you’re a Republican and a secret Swiftie” and “it got thousands and thousands of comments of girls being like ‘I’m admitting it too,'” Debra said. “And so this time around, now that we’re four years later, I think the Republican side and the GOP at large gets a negative 10 out of 10 for marketing and branding. Negative 100 out of 10. If it’s possible, they suck at it.”
“We are so sick of not having one thing in this American society that we can enjoy with your neighbor without some aspect of politics infiltrating, whether it’s football games, baseball games, movies, music, anything. It’s really frustrating,” Debra said. “And so to me it’s a shock of like, ‘Shut up with your label, shut up, but you can’t do this or that.’ At the end of the day, we’re humans. We’re not black and white. We’re very complex beings. And being a Swiftie, a Trump-supporter, bypassing these lines, like seeing with like the gays for Trump, movements that have grown really popular, it’s not about being either one of those labels. It’s about saying ‘politics is not the most important thing, and I’m disagreeing with this hyper globalized, politicized society, and I’m going to be me,’ and so that’s what I really think it’s about now. And if we brand that, and I think that’s what a lot of these women feel. It’s not about Trump or Swift it really comes down to I just want to be me and live my life. And I’m sick of trying to fit all these stupid little boxes that progressives have set for us.”
Debra Lea, still from commentary on Instagram
Morgonn McMichael, a TPUSA contributor, noticed that trend, too, saying that “I really think that the movement over the last two months has shown it’s okay to be a Swiftie and it’s okay to also vote for Donald Trump and be supportive of the conservative movement, because there are things that are impacting us, individuals like Jenna said, and here we have inflation, we have the border, we have all the political issues. And I feel like there really was a stigma for quite a long time that Swifties couldn’t be conservative, and conservative, Swifties felt silenced. But now, with it being, you know, less than 70 days, I think now, out from the election, girls are starting to finally feel their power and say, ‘Yeah, I like Taylor Swift. I like her music. That doesn’t mean I like her politics, and I’m not voting for Taylor Swift for President.’ I can listen to somebody’s music and not agree with what they say or do politically. But there’s definitely been a big shift, I think, in the last, honestly, eight weeks of just social media trends, of people feeling comfortable and just making content now that is for conservatives, but using Taylor Swift.”
“There’s a lot of cancel culture going on,” said Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with The Post Millennial, “and I live in Seattle.” If she listened to all the haters, “I wouldn’t be able to live my normal life. And I actually think that people need to realize that politics shouldn’t divide pleasures such as music, and we shouldn’t deprive ourselves from things that we like because other people might have different political views.”
Katie and Alex both touched on a key concern of Swifties that they believe Trump is capable of solving, and that’s public safety. “I’m a pretty one item line voter these days,” Katie said, “and it’s all public safety, and there’s zero public safety with Democrats in office. And so you have the defunding of the police. There’s no more police where I live. And then you have the open borders, the illegal immigrants are killing everyone, but there’s no more freedom of speech. We should not let a singer, who we support, impact our decisions to think critically.”
“I want to remind them of the Vienna shows being canceled,” Alex said. “When Donald Trump is not President, terrorism grows. ISIS, everything was kept at bay when Donald Trump was president. If Taylor wants to feel safer, her fans to feel safer going to her concerts, whether domestically or abroad, you want Donald Trump as president.”
Alex Clark and Donald Trump
Trump, they say, is also likely a Swift fan. Jenna said, “He liked Taylor, he respects her.” While Alex added that Trump was tweeting about Swift in 2012. She said there’s “video of him and Melania and Barron in the car listening to Blank Space driving around. He’s tweeted in support,’ I love watching Taylor. Taylor’s one of the greatest.’ So, Donald Trump is a Swiftie. Kamala Harris has probably never, couldn’t tell you anything about any of Taylor’s songs or anything. I guarantee Donald Trump could say more about Taylor and her discography than Kamala Harris.”