Trump thinks he’s more popular than Taylor Swift

Donald Trump has reportedly been grousing about Taylor Swift’s popularity amid speculation that she’s set to endorse President Joe Biden.

Swift is yet to issue an endorsement of any candidate, but The New York Times reported on Monday that aides to the president are hoping to sign her on as a campaign surrogate considering her expansive cultural influence.

Meanwhile, some conspiracy-minded conservatives have even convinced themselves that this year’s NFL season has been rigged to provide a Super Bowl platform for Swift alongside her boyfriend Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Now, an individual close to Mr Trump has told Rolling Stone magazine that allies of the former president are preparing for a “holy war” against the pop star.

A potential endorsement of the Democrat will add rocket fuel to that fight, with three insiders saying that his campaign is assuming that Swift will back Mr Biden as she did in 2020.

Mr Trump has argued in private that celebrity endorsements won’t help Mr Biden, claiming that he’s “more popular” than the pop star and that his fans are more committed than hers, according to Rolling Stone.

The president reportedly said last month that it was “obviously” nonsensical that he was not declared Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2023 – instead of her.

“Joe Biden might be counting on Taylor Swift to save him, but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,’” Trump adviser Jason Miller told Rolling Stone in a statement, quoting the title of a 2012 Swift song.

After Swift endorsed two Democrats running in her home state of Tennessee in the 2018 midterms, Mr Trump said he likes her music “about 25 per cent less now”.

Then in 2020, Swift accused Mr Trump of attempting to “blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk” after his administration worked to limit mail-in voting in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

One person working on Mr Trump’s campaign told Rolling Stone that Swift publically backing Mr Biden again “would be more fuel thrown onto the culture-war fires”.

“Another left-wing celebrity who is part of the Democrat elite telling you what to think,” the individual said.

Swift is already garnering significant attention in right-wing media and among conservative political figures, including former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months,” he wrote on X on Monday.

On Tuesday night, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked: “Does Taylor realise the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess, doesn’t have the energy to even give a 30-minute speech, let alone perform a three-hour concert like she does?”

“He also is kind of very creepy. She may want to check out those creepy videos, they’re online,” he added.

“Maybe she just bought into all the lies about conservatives and Republicans, that they are racist and sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and transphobic and Islamophobic. And Republicans and conservatives want dirty air and water, and a total ban on all abortion with no exceptions,” Mr Hannity said.

“If she believes all that, she is believing a lie. Because those talking points are simply untrue.”

“Now, I’m just saying, maybe she wants to think twice before making a decision about 2024,” he said.

“A total ban on abortion is literally in the Republican Party platform,” commentator Matthew Yglesias noted on X.