Trump Promotes A.I. Images to Falsely Suggest Taylor Swift Endorsed Him

The former president has been preoccupied with the popularity of the pop music megastar, who endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. over him during the 2020 election.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who has notably harbored a grudge against the pop music megastar Taylor Swift, set the internet ablaze on Sunday when he shared social media posts suggesting that she had endorsed him and that her fans could help him win the November election.

In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Mr. Trump drew attention to a group of images that were created using artificial intelligence. One showed Ms. Swift dressed up as Uncle Sam with the headline: “Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump.” The others depicted a crowd of young women wearing matching “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.

At least one of the images, which were shared by a social media influencer aligned with Mr. Trump, was labeled “satire.”

“I accept,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post, seemingly implying that he had received Ms. Swift’s endorsement.
A representative for Ms. Swift, who has not made an endorsement this election cycle after backing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The mockery from Democrats was swift.

Representative Eric Swalwell of California, appearing on CNN on Monday, said that the move would backfire on Mr. Trump.

“This genius, over the weekend, decided to poke the eyes of Swifties and suggest that Taylor Swift is endorsing him,” Mr. Swalwell said. “They are going to have a marvelous time ruining everything for Donald Trump over the next 78 days.”

A.J. Delgado, a former campaign communications adviser for Mr. Trump in 2016 who sued him for wrongful termination, urged a publicist for Ms. Swift to clear up the misinformation.

“You’re going to let this go uncorrected?” she wrote on X.

Mr. Trump’s tactics marked another twist in his long-running preoccupation with Ms. Swift, who earlier this year was the focus of a right-wing meltdown over her political preferences. The fixation of the Make America Great Again movement bubbled up around the Super Bowl, when Ms. Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, won back-to-back titles.
Conspiracy theories proliferated that Ms. Swift was a secret agent of the Pentagon and that she was bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden’s re-election.

At the time, Mr. Trump reportedly said that he was more popular than Ms. Swift and that it would be disloyal for her to support Mr. Biden’s re-election, given that Mr. Trump had signed legislation that made it easier for artists to collect royalties when their songs are streamed.

Then, Mr. Trump privately complained to a group of House Republicans during a June visit to Capitol Hill that Ms. Swift did not endorse him in 2020.
That year, Ms. Swift did not hold back her criticism of Mr. Trump amid the widespread protests after police in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?,” she wrote on Twitter, now X. ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”