People are really starting to tack the hate onto Taylor Swift—namely, Republicans.
According to a Monmouth University Poll, 32 percent or roughly one in three Republicans believe a conspiracy theory peddled by far-right influencers about the singer, agreeing that Swift is a CIA psyop and part of a covert government effort to help president Joe Biden win re-election in 2024. That’s against 57 percent of Republicans who responded that they didn’t believe the theory, and 11 percent who responded that they don’t know.
Conversely, of those who said they believed in the conspiracy theory, 71 percent identified with the Republican Party, while 83 percent said they were likely to support Donald Trump in the upcoming general election, according to the survey.
Equally telling, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of those who believed in the Swift conspiracy theory also believed the 2020 election outcome was fraudulent.
Conservative respondents were also equally split on whether they supported Swift encouraging people to vote, with 47 percent approving and 44 percent disapproving.
“The supposed Taylor Swift PsyOp conspiracy has legs among a decent number of Trump supporters. Even many who hadn’t heard about it before we polled them accept the idea as credible. Welcome to the 2024 election,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
Swift’s boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs captain Travis Kelce, had just one thing to say for the outlandish theory’s believers.
“They’re all crazy. Every last one of you are crazy,” he said during a segment that aired during Super Bowl 2024.
In total, 1 in 5 Americans believe the Swift psyop conspiracy theory.
Take note, there are other, totally legit reasons to condemn the “Bad Blood” singer—perhaps most egregiously for topping a list of celebs with the highest carbon emissions, or for recently bringing her mighty team of lawyers down on a college student who tracks celebrities’ private jet usage on Twitter via publicly available data.