Will Taylor Swift pay the White House a visit after the Chief’s Super Bowl win?
The Kansas City Chiefs have just won the Super Bowl, and that is nice. But just to focus on the real news for one second: Could this mean that Taylor Swift — the global superstar, football enthusiast and onetime Biden endorser — is going to visit the White House?
Asked on Monday whether the White House would extend an invitation to the singer, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said that decision was up to the team, not President Biden.
“That’s going to be up to the Chiefs, and obviously, their decision to figure out who’s going to come with them when they come,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “And as you know, it’s a White House tradition. I can’t, I can’t speak to attendance and who will be here, but we look forward to having them here.”
Here is some background for the six people on planet Earth who might still need it: Ms. Swift, the pop singer, has been dating Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Chiefs, since at least the fall, embarking on an expanded version of the soft-focus, jock-meets-music-nerd love story that she once divined as a younger songwriter. And Mr. Kelce, the most famous tight end in the National Football League thanks in part to his girlfriend’s star power, is on the team that will receive a traditional invitation from the president to celebrate their win at the White House.
A White House visit from Ms. Swift would add fuel to several theories — none of which she has acknowledged herself — that she has the power to bolster Mr. Biden’s re-election bid and sink the prospects of his likely challenger, Donald J. Trump.
In recent weeks, Mr. Biden’s allies have buzzed with anticipation that Ms. Swift may deliver an endorsement, as she did in 2020. Mr. Trump seems anxious about that prospect as well. In a social media post over the weekend, he said he was responsible for legislation that has contributed to Ms. Swift’s success.
“There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money,” Mr. Trump said. “Besides that, I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!”
Ms. Swift, 34, had no comment — but she has historically not reacted well when people have tried to take ownership of her work. And in any case, she was busy, and probably jet-lagged, after traveling from her tour in Tokyo to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. There, she chugged a drink on national television, jumped up and down in support of her boyfriend and joined him on the field for a kiss after the Chiefs won.
On Sunday evening, it was Mr. Biden, and not Mr. Trump, who made mention of the conservative conspiracy theory that the singer is actually an operative for the Democratic Party — or the Pentagon? it’s hard to follow — in her spare time, and that her romance with Mr. Kelce, 34, is actually part of a sinister plot to thwart Mr. Trump. Or something like that.
“Just like we drew it up, @Chiefs,” Mr. Biden’s account wrote on social media after the game, along with an image that paid a homage to his “Dark Brandon” alter ego, an edgier and more online version of the president, if he could shoot laser beams out of his eyes.
Anyway.
Ms. Swift has waded into politics in the years since the 2016 presidential race, when she was criticized for avoiding an endorsement and observers speculated over her political beliefs. In 2018, ahead of the midterm elections, she wrote on Instagram she would vote for Phil Bredesen, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican of Tennessee. (Ms. Blackburn won.)
A clip from her 2020 documentary “Miss Americana” showed that the deliberation behind Ms. Swift’s decision to endorse Mr. Bredesen was more intense than was publicly known. In that clip, a tearful Ms. Swift told her father that she needed to be “on the right side of history” and that “if he doesn’t win, then at least I tried.”
In that conversation, her father, Scott Swift, warned her about the danger of getting involved in politics, saying that he had to order “armored cars” to keep his daughter safe.
In October 2020, Ms. Swift endorsed Mr. Biden in an interview with V Magazine.
“I will proudly vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential election. Under their leadership, I believe America has a chance to start the healing process it so desperately needs,” she said at the time.
Tree Paine, a representative for Ms. Swift, did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday asking whether the singer would travel to the White House or whether she planned to endorse Mr. Biden.