“I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” That’s what Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform this week. He’s a little late. Most of the rest of America figured out whether they were Swifties or haters at least three albums ago. Of course, Trump wasn’t referring to the billionaire pop star’s music, but to her endorsement of his rival Kamala Harris. I can’t imagine any other president reacting with such petulance. Nixon or Johnson might have thought something similar if a superstar opposed them, but they would never have uttered it in public.
The only former world leaders I can think of with a similar small-mindedness and lack of impulse control are would-be authoritarians: the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, for example, who once called the U.S. ambassador a “gay son of a bitch.” Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who said a congresswoman was too ugly to be “worth raping.” Or outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has labeled rivals and journalists “pimps” and “dirt.” Yet even they had more self-discipline than to throw a tantrum about a singer.
I realize that this is far from the most egregious thing Trump has said in just the past few weeks. At the debate, he repeated the lie that Haitian immigrants were eating cats, while a few days later he called migrants “TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS, AND MENTALLY INSANE.” But that’s exactly the point. All these rants pile up, to remind us of the nonstop cycle of outrage that characterized Trump’s years in office.
That’s what Swift was referencing in her endorsement, when she said she thought America should be led by “calm, not chaos.” And it’s what she was getting at in the spoken-word portion in one of her old hits from 2012. Talking of a tedious man who keeps begging for her attention, she says, “I just, I mean — this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever.” The question is how many voters feel the same.
This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.