Attentive Americans have learned much in recent years. For instance, when powerful people share the same interests, a de facto conspiracy automatically materializes.
Last week, 18 percent of respondents to a Monmouth University poll reported that they believe in the existence of a “covert government effort” to use pop-music megastar Taylor Swift in support of President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election bid.
The word “covert,” of course, makes all the difference. According to some prominent anti-establishment figures with large followings on social media, the deep state — that sinister phalanx of unelected federal operatives at the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and elsewhere — might have made a secret-yet-calculated decision to weaponize Swift’s popularity in hopes of boosting Biden’s fortunes and, by extension, their own.
Meanwhile, speculation about Swift’s role as a potential deep-state psy-op spurred the regime’s scribes to action. The establishment media — dutifully and predictably — smeared those anti-establishment figures with shopworn epithets such as “white nationalists” and “far-right extremists.”
Last month, a report surfaced that Biden campaign officials hoped Swift would endorse the president as she did in 2020. The establishment, of course, would rather manipulate Swift and treat voters with condescension than do anything to improve Americans’ lives. But at least that particular courting of Swift occurred in the open.
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For his part, former President Donald Trump — the likely Republican presidential nominee — took a diplomatic approach. Trump, in fact, had nothing negative to say about Swift, preferring instead to stay focused on Biden’s catastrophic failures.
Still, the Swift psy-op theory took hold for a reason. Here we review the theory itself, the establishment media’s reaction, why the theory developed and what it all means.
The Swift Psy-Op Theory
The theory holds that the deep state has cultivated Swift as part of a years-long effort to prop up Biden while at the same time fighting what the establishment calls “disinformation.”
Do you think Taylor Swift is a deep state psy-op?
One part of the theory involves Swift’s unlikely career arc. The 34-year-old singer-songwriter has enjoyed commercial success for decades. But only in recent years has she emerged as a global superstar. To some, that sudden rise has felt inorganic.
Another part of the theory involves her much-publicized relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Pfizer spokesman Travis Kelce. Early in the 2023 season, Swift began appearing at Kelce’s games. To the chagrin of many traditional NFL fans, the league’s network partners gave her relentless attention during broadcasts.
The theory gained traction on social media in December after Time named Swift its 2023 “Person of the Year.” Then, during the NFL playoffs, Kelce’s Chiefs made what some regarded as an improbable run to another Super Bowl title. Despite a lengthy record of success, the Chiefs had a comparatively mediocre 2023 regular season and did not enter the playoffs as Super Bowl favorites.
Nonetheless, something about the Swift-Kelce relationship made the eventual Super Bowl winner appear predictable to intelligent observers. Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, for instance, cynically-yet-accurately guessed the Super Bowl’s outcome two weeks before the game.
“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,” Ramaswamy wrote Jan. 29 on the social media platform X.
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.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 29, 2024
Thus, even before Kansas City’s 25-22 overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, a serious presidential contender and possible Trump running mate wondered aloud if powerful institutions, such as the federal government and the NFL, had orchestrated the entire Swift-Kelce narrative and even rigged games to ensure maximum exposure for the woke singer and her vaccine-endorsing boyfriend.
It all seemed too convenient, for the high-profile Swift-Kelce pairing perfectly suited the establishment’s interests.
The Establishment Media’s Reaction to the Theory
With predictable swiftness, and operating from the same playbook, establishment-media outlets attacked anyone who advanced a version of the theory.
For instance, on X, investigative journalist and ardent Trump supporter Laura Loomer raised the question of Swift’s connection to left-wing billionaire George Soros and his son Alex. Rather than take the question seriously, The Washington Post simply smeared Loomer as “a far-right extremist.”
Likewise, when Time announced Swift as its “Person of the Year,” anti-establishment commentator Jack Posobiec saw this as evidence of the possible psy-op. Again, the Post chose to focus on Posobiec, describing him as “a former Navy intelligence officer and far-right media personality, known for advancing conspiracy theories such as ‘Pizzagate.’”
Then, in January, Fox News host Jesse Watters aired a segment suggesting that officials have eyed Swift for years. Specifically, he showed a clip from an August 2019 NATO meeting in which the singer’s name came up as an example of a social influencer who could fight online misinformation and change public behavior.
Watters made no specific allegations. In fact, he carefully framed the entire segment as speculation.
“I like her music. She’s all right. But, I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” Watters said.
After Watters’ segment aired, the establishment media worked overtime — and in tandem — to discredit it.
Mediaite, for instance, suggested that “Watters may have gotten the idea for the misleading segment” from a clip posted to X by former Trump State Department official Mike Benz. Then, MSNBC cited the Mediaite story and described Benz as someone who “previously ran an alt-right account that engaged with white nationalists and shared racist conspiracy theories like the ‘great replacement theory.’” Politifact also got the memo, dismissing Benz as “a content creator associated with white nationalists.”
Of course, no one in the establishment media seemed remotely curious about why NATO would hold meetings about online “disinformation.”
Why the Theory Developed and What It All Means
Put simply, the theory developed and spread because Americans have good reasons to distrust their government. Recruiting and weaponizing Swift seems like something the deep state would do, whether or not it actually did so.
With this in mind, 18 percent feels like a pretty low number.
After all, according to Gallup, at no time since 1963 have fewer than half of Americans believed that conspirators — not a lone gunman — assassinated President John F. Kennedy. In fact, as of 2023, 65 percent of U.S. adults still believed in that conspiracy.
Furthermore, when asked to name a probable culprit in Kennedy’s murder, respondents most frequently cited the federal government (20 percent) and the CIA (16 percent).
Likewise, in September 2023, 63 percent of respondents to a NewsNation poll said that they believed “the U.S. government has more information about extraterrestrial life than has been shared publicly.”
In other words, if nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the federal government both murdered a sitting president and concealed evidence of aliens, then the 18 percent who believe in the Swift psy-op theory should strike us as a comparatively minuscule group. In fact, some might regard that level of implied trust in the deep state as naive credulity.
On the other hand, different wording almost certainly would have produced different results.
For instance, many respondents might have expressed disbelief because they have seen no direct evidence of this specific conspiracy. But how might they have answered if asked whether they thought the deep state capable of such a psy-op? In that case, surely the percentage of affirmative responses would have tripled or even quadrupled.
After all, when was the last time the deep state or the establishment media told Americans the truth?
They told us that defending “democracy” required NATO to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Meanwhile, a dissident American journalist died in a Ukrainian prison. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson that the U.S. has operated bio-weapons labs in Ukraine. And the establishment media took no interest in either story.
During the COVID era, they first told us to social distance for 15 days in order to slow the spread. They kept us six feet apart before admitting years later that this edict had no clear scientific basis. Then they mocked ivermectin as a “horse medicine.” And they told us that the vaccine would stop transmission of the virus.
In the events surrounding the 2020 election, they repeatedly championed mail-in-ballots. They found 51 intelligence officials to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” And they crafted an implausible narrative surrounding the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
How far back must we go? Benghazi? Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Indeed, there is almost nothing more American than a healthy distrust of government. And Americans have often articulated that distrust in conspiratorial terms.
Before the Civil War, for instance, Abraham Lincoln described a supposed conspiracy to spread slavery westward.
In the decade preceding the American Revolution, prominent statesmen accused the British of conspiring against liberty. Those Founding-era conspiracy theorists included John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. And the Declaration of Independence even decried a purported “design to reduce [Americans] under absolute Despotism.”
In sum, the deep state might or might not have enlisted Swift as part of a pro-Biden, pro-establishment psy-op. But could anyone seriously believe that it would not do so if given the chance?
Furthermore, the existence of an overt conspiracy would make little real difference. After all, when the interests of the powerful align, and when circumstances appear to favor those interests, an unspoken or de facto conspiracy already exists.
