Trump's politics of hate hits Taylor Swift

Last month, former President Trump posted a collage of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts on Truth Social. Most of the images clearly looked like they had been generated by artificial intelligence.

“I accept!” Trump told his 7.1 million followers, prompting the world’s most famous childless cat to pounce on him with her claws out.

“I recently became aware that an AI was posted on his page falsely endorsing 'me' for Donald Trump's presidential candidacy,” Taylor Swift wrote on Instagram shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris trounced Trump in their first and likely only debate. “This really reignited my fears about AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It made me realize that as a voter, I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election. The easiest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

And that’s why, she wrote, she will vote for Harris as her presidential candidate and signed her post “Childless Cat Lady.”

“I think she is a calm, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country when we are led by calm, not chaos,” Swift told her 284 million followers.

I don't know how many of those are American voters, but it only takes a tiny fraction of that number to change the outcome in a swing state. In 2020, for example, Wisconsin voters chose President Biden over then-President Trump by 20,682 votes. In Georgia, it was even closer. Biden won the state by 11,779 votes, prompting Trump's infamous and arguably illegal appeal to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him another 11,780 votes. But I digress.

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Swift also urged her many fans to register to vote, telling them, “Your research is yours, and the decision is yours. … Remember, you must be registered to vote!” She linked to a federal government voter registration page, and the impact was immediate. More than 405,000 visitors clicked on the link within 24 hours of Swift's post.

Those clicks alone don't necessarily translate into new registrations or votes. But Tom Bonier of data firm TargetSmart says it's entirely possible. “We've seen this massive spike, we now call it the Swift effect,” Bonier said on “Face the Nation” last week. And he added that, according to data collected since 2020, about 80% of voters who register this late in the election cycle actually turn out to vote.

A day after Swift's endorsement, Trump broke down like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” he screamed on Truth Social.

This seemed even less presidential for Trump than usual. The outburst prompted MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to say that he had “the most hateful mind and soul in the history of presidents.”

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O'Donnell researched presidential statements and could find only one other president who had used the word “hate” so publicly: George HW Bush. I thought O'Donnell was going to mention Bush's famous aversion to broccoli, but he was referring to Bush's 2002 statement of hatred toward Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The thing about hate is that, like fear, it is a powerful motivator. In fact, hate and fear are the most important arrows in Trump's political quiver, integral to his grim vision of an America that is falling apart and in need of a savior.

The Trump-Vance campaign's scapegoating of legal immigrants from Haiti who have settled in Springfield, Ohio, is a natural, if inexcusable, extension of the politics of hate. So is his bizarrely close relationship with the crazed racist and Islamophobe Laura Loomer, and of course his continued embrace of the white nationalists and Holocaust deniers who hang out at Mar-a-Lago.

His running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, is an example of how hate is an integral part of Trump's success.

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“I think our people hate the right people,” Vance said in an interview with the American Conservative in 2021 while running for his Senate seat. Perhaps this was meant to be a clever quote, along the lines of comparing Democrats to childless cat ladies, a cliche Vance coined around the same time.

Vance’s hate comment expresses the ethos of the MAGA movement in a profound way.

It is still too early to say whether Trump directing his hate against Swift will backfire.

But how nice would it be if Harris were to win on cat's paws?

@robinkabcarian

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.