Donald Trump has shared edited photos on social media of Taylor Swift and her fans supporting his presidential campaign, in an apparent attempt to leverage the pop singer’s mega star power in the US election.
Ms Swift has not yet publicly endorsed any presidential candidate in the November 5 election, but she did support President Joe Biden in 2020 and has previously criticised Trump.
On Sunday, Trump shared screenshots of posts containing manipulated images — some of which one expert said appeared to be generated by AI — that showed the pop star and her fans, known as Swifties, supporting his campaign.
In his Truth Social post, which included a poster of Swift wearing an Uncle Sam costume and instructing her fans to vote for Trump, the former president wrote: “I accept!”
Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP that the poster was either “generated by AI or traditionally manipulated.”
The posts also included photos of women wearing shirts with the slogan “Swifties for Trump,” some of which Farid said had “clear signs of being generated by AI.”
Farid said what made the mix-up “particularly devious” was that it included a mix of real and fake images, with at least one photo of a woman wearing one of these shirts appearing to be real.
There was no immediate comment about Trump’s post from Swift, who separately shared a video of a supporter on Truth Social that made the dubious claim that “Swifty was rallying for Trump.”
Swift’s growing popularity and influence over her fans could make her endorsement valuable in the upcoming presidential election.
Both Republicans and Democrats have long wanted to count on her support, but the megastar has remained largely quiet about her political leanings.
Demonstrating her star power, when Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote last year, directing them to the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org, her appeal had an immediate impact.
Following his message, the institution said it recorded more than 35,000 new registrations, a 23 per cent increase over the previous year and the highest since 2020.
Swift’s political activism has received intense scrutiny, making her a target of political misinformation and right-wing conspiracy theories.
Her coy attitude led many critics to speculate that Swift was secretly a Republican, but in 2018 she broke both her silence and the internet by endorsing the Democratic opponent of far-right U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee.
Since then she has spoken out specifically for the legal right to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
In recent weeks, speculation has grown on social media that Swift would endorse Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the November election.
The megastar has not commented publicly, but that hasn’t stopped a horde of fans from forming a group called “Swifties for Kamala,” which has garnered thousands of followers on platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
