Taylor Swift has largely stayed away from politics so far this election cycle, but politics can’t seem to stay away from her. You may recall that earlier this year, her romantic relationship with football player Travis Kelce briefly but memorably ignited a conservative firestorm concerning the Super Bowl. More recently, although Swift hasn’t endorsed anyone in the 2024 presidential election, that didn’t stop her fans from forming an organization called “Swifties for Kamala” this summer. Now, the past few days have demonstrated that Swift can’t even attend a sporting event without it becoming a referendum on her politics.
This latest controversy concerns Brittany Mahomes, who I would identify as a friend of Swift’s if that weren’t itself hotly debated. We’ll go with “associate.” Mahomes is married to Swift’s boyfriend’s teammate on the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes, and so the two have been associates since last year, when Swift went public with her relationship with Kelce and started showing up at his games, which she frequently watched alongside Mahomes. Cut to August, in the run-up to Season 2 of Tayvis, when Mahomes made headlines for liking a pro–Donald Trump Instagram post. It was right before the football season opener, leading to a fair amount of speculation: Would Swift distance herself from this woman now that she had revealed herself to be a Trump supporter?
At first, it seemed like the answer was yes. Swift and Mahomes sat in separate boxes at the Chiefs-Ravens game on Thursday, leading to sighs of relief from some fans and a TMZ headline speculating that the two were on the outs. Swift is known for her canny PR and employs a publicist, Tree Paine, who has earned a following in her own right, and it looked like Swift and Paine had once again managed to defuse a potentially thorny situation. Except, a few days later, the two went ahead and un-defused it. On Sunday, Taylor showed up at the U.S. Open in New York with Kelce, and the two sat in a box with Brittany and Patrick Mahomes. Several pictures captured Swift and Mahomes hugging and looking friendly.
On social media, some fans expressed their disappointment that Swift would associate with a Trump supporter. Funnier to me were the fans who seemed intent on not believing what they saw with their own eyes: “Taylor is not giving that woman the time of day. A couple cordial pictures means nothing,” one wrote on Twitter. “I was there, I was across from their suite, and Taylor did not interact with Brittany nearly as much as everyone seems to think,” wrote another. These fans are the same ones who comfort themselves with the idea that Swift and Mahomes are not friends but associates, thrown together by WAGdom. I mean, it’s possible, but it seems like a stretch: There’s plenty of photo evidence of the two celebrating at games and spending time together outside of stadiums too. Even so, this sentiment comes from a similar place as that of the people who see the pictures and read the worst into them: Many fans today care that the artists they support are “good” people, whatever that means to them, and that their values align with theirs.
This ire over Swift potentially palling around with a Trump supporter makes more sense when you look at it in the context of her not having endorsed Kamala Harris yet: I suppose it’s fair to wonder if her views have shifted since the last presidential election, or to accuse Swift of only making liberal statements in the past for show. There have certainly been times in the past when Swift’s been very reactive to anyone invoking her name: It’s a little mystifying that she would speak out against a dumb Netflix show she perceived to have slagged her or that her publicist would bother to go after the Instagram gossip account DeuxMoi, but that neither would say anything when Donald Trump makes attempts to co-opt her image, as he did in a much-discussed social media post over the summer. One caveat is that Swift and her team may also be considering factors they can’t talk about: It was only about a month ago that Swift canceled some concerts in Vienna due to threats of terrorism. Afterward, she wrote on Instagram, “I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows.”
While I think it’s unlikely her politics (or the way her brand incorporates politics) have done a complete 180, I do think Swift, who never does anything by accident, may be trying to send a message to her fans that she isn’t going to kowtow to their every criticism of her. The lyrics of “But Daddy I Love Him,” a song from her most recent album, April’s The Tortured Poets Department, spring to mind: “God save the most judgmental creeps/ Who say they want the best for me/ Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see.” These lines were widely interpreted to be a swipe at the fan backlash Swift received last year when she dated Matty Healy, a member of the band The 1975 who rubbed many the wrong way with his edgelord-y behavior. But they also could be read as a larger statement about Swift’s relationship to her fandom.
Social media gives us some sense, but it’s hard to gauge how Swift’s appearance with Mahomes is going over among her audience at large. (Externally, at least—I like to imagine that Paine has access to sophisticated polling data most political operatives could only dream of.) Everything Swift does gets a certain amount of backlash, but as far as I can tell I don’t think this has reached the level of the Matty Healy affair, much less the heights of Swift’s feud with Kanye West and the Kardashians. Swift has a bigger and more loyal fanbase than ever, but perhaps more importantly, her stance here is a sane one. What is she supposed to do, cut someone out of her life and be rude to them in public because they disagree with her on politics? Having people in her life, especially people she didn’t necessarily choose, who don’t vote the way she does probably only makes Taylor Swift more relatable to some of her audience. If fans want to be delusional, maybe they can tell themselves Swift is sharing good liberal talking points with Mahomes whenever she gets the chance. (Also, let’s not overstate the extent of what we know about Mahomes’ Trump support: Despite Trump trying to claim her as one of his faithful, all she did was like and unlike a post, and then defend herself with some vague talk about “haters.” If she starts sounding like Amber Rose, I can see Swift reevaluating.)
Will Swift eventually endorse Harris, after all this? As a recent Variety piece pointed out, all her hand-wringing over her decision to come out as political in the past, as seen in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, will look pretty cynical if she doesn’t. Still, will it matter, in a bigger sense? In a New York Times opinion piece this week, B.D. McClay wrote that the idea that the endorsement of a celebrity like Swift can move the needle all that much is a bit of a fantasy: “We continue to hold out hope that celebrities, through their sheer persuasive charisma, will save us from the hard work of politics itself.” She’s right; it feels like anyone who’s upset about Taylor Swift hanging out with someone who liked a pro-Trump Instagram post may just be looking for somewhere to channel all their anxiety about the election and the world itself. It’s true, the world is a scary place. If only giving side-eye to Brittany Mahomes could make it any better.
