Defining the News
A Fox News host suggested this week that Taylor Swift is a “front for a covert political agenda,” echoing disinformation that has percolated in right-wing circles for months — and which experts say will likely get worse before the 2024 US election.
“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this? Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting,” Watters said Tuesday, resurfacing a clip from a 2019 summit by NATO’s cyber defense hub. Watters also brought up a reported traffic surge on Vote.org in September — immediately after Swift posted an Instagram story encouraging fans to participate in National Voter Registration Day — to posit that someone “got to her from the White House or from wherever.”
Watters — whose primetime show is the second-most watched cable news show in the United States, drawing an average audience of nearly 2.5 million viewers — conceded later during the segment that he “obviously has no evidence” for the claims.Already a megastar, Swift’s stature grew in 2023, as she broke music records, performed the highest-grossing music tour in history and began dating American football player Travis Kelce. Time magazine named her Person of the Year.
“The way in which it is happening is very gendered because it is relatively easier to attach incredulous disinformation claims to female celebrities,” said Swapnil Rai, an assistant media professor at the University of Michigan. The famously tight-lipped Swift remained quiet during former president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, but she later criticized him and endorsed Biden in 2020.