Donald Trump is trying to brush off the fact that he shared A.I.-generated images of Taylor Swift endorsing his campaign to his Truth Social account earlier this week, now claiming that he doesn’t know “anything about them.”
As he should.
Given everything going on in this country and Trump’s ability to turn everything he touches shit, I almost think Swift has to respond to this at some point. I’m surprised she hasn’t already. I understand her desire to stay out of politics. But speaking out and denouncing this and everything about Trump isn’t her getting into politics. It’s her having to because Trump dragged her into it kicking and screaming.
She can’t stop those images from circulating. But the more they circulate, the more chances that at least some people think they’re real. Or at the very least, they may interpret her silence as a tacit endorsement. Some may even consider her a Trump supporter, especially those who don’t follow either her or politics closely enough to know that while she’s never taken an official political position, she’s proudly left leaning. Either way, those pictures have a very high likelihood of causing reputational (and, by extension, financial) harm by alienating a chunk of her fan base who may think she endorses his viewpoints. Especially when paired with his post implying she endorsed him.
Are those pictures even still up on his feed? I’m not going on that mall-restroom Twitter knockoff of his to check. I was half-surprised not to see her legal team have a C&D letter sent to him with his early morning McDonalds the next morning, a public statement by lunch, and a lawsuit filed against him for implying she endorsed him by the time the courtrooms had closed. I would fucking love to see Trump try to bully down Taylor fucking Swift’s legal team. You could put that shit on pay per view and eliminate the national debt.
It’s entirely possible that Taylor’s legal team already got in touch, discreetly, and warned him to cut that shit out, or else she will unload a can of legal whoop-ass on him. She is under no obligation to endorse anyone. Whatever her political beliefs are, she may have made the purposeful choice to stay out of it. And she may not want to get involved in a lawsuit over this, unless she has to to protect her brand.
Which may also explain why now he “doesn’t know anything about it”. Denial is his go-to when he is caught.
She did respond and said she wanted to wait until after her tour so her fans were safe. She is definitely alluding to an endorsement as well.
Here is the quote:
“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” Swift wrote. "In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to.”
She’s just another fucking billionaire worried about her dollars above all else. Half of her fans are the part of the fascist cult that’s ruining the US. If she were to denounce him, that would cut into her profits. having more dollars on top of a billion is just more important to her.
Hahahhahaa this is the same old neoliberal handwaving. She’s a republican. Look at her bank account.
Funny how she has already denounced Trump years ago. She has never liked him, endorsed him, or approved of him. There is video of her shit talking him to her parents and managers.
Ah yes the famous “let the terrorists frighten you into silence” strategy
That’s bullshit. Just because it’s not convenient for our political strategy doesn’t mean she has to risk her safety or the safety of her fans by further involving herself.
If she speaks out against the maniacal right there is a greater than zero chance that many innocent people other than her will be hurt. It would not be the first time.
She doesn’t have to do anything and I wouldn’t really expect her to take the Dead Kennedys approach. It makes it clear though, how politics in this country have gotten to where they are when those who make a play for power through force can command the narrative unopposed like that
It is bullshit that the right wing has used the fear of political violence to chill free expression, yes.
I understand Ms Swift might prioritize the safety of her fans and her self, but the fact remains that that is a decision made in response to threats of terrorism (real or imagined, but definitely plausible)
When is her tour over?
Edit:
It commenced on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, and is set to conclude on December 8, 2024, in Vancouver, consisting of 149 shows that span five continents.
Welp, either she changes her mind or it’ll be too late to do anything.
I mean, at the same time, I think it’s entirely rational to fear that Trump will attempt to gin up some stochastic terrorism targeted at not only her, but her audience. In that context, how she’s playing it is kinda just the best possible play.
All I am saying is that if she wants to use her platform to encourage voting for Democrats, she cannot do so in time for it to make any difference in the election, if she waits until her tour is over.
Maybe she just wants to stay out of it. I think that’s responsible since Meal Team 6/Y’all Qaeda attacking her fans is a real possibility.
For sure, her quotes though seemed to Indicate to me that she wanted to voice her opinion but not until she could do it without affecting her tour
Yeah I think this shows her true colors. She could act now, and likely have a genuine impact. But instead “doing this might hurt concert sales so I’ll wait until the end of the tour which oh btw would be after the election tehe”
Shes a Republican, of course she isn’t responding
Swift is most definitely not a Republican.
Either way, those pictures have a very high likelihood of causing reputational (and, by extension, financial) harm by alienating a chunk of her fan base who may think she endorses his viewpoints. Especially when paired with his post implying she endorsed him.
I bet she could even argue that him forcing her to take a position publicly against him also constitutes financial harm, because of the possibility of it alienating any of her fans that were Trump supporters.
Right. He basically put her into a situation where whichever side she chose, she loses. It’s one of the reasons she’s never gotten involved publicly in politics. She’s smart enough to know that she’ll alienate a portion of her fans no matter which side she chooses, so as far as I can tell she preferred to just stay out of the whole thing and make all the fucking money.
And that’s not a bad thing. Not every celebrity has to be a political activist, and people who go to any concert are looking to have a fun time, not attend a really loud political rally. And her position in all of this is to give a whole bunch of young people a place to go and shut their brains off for a night.
And that’s not a bad thing.
Counter argument: sometimes doing nothing is allowing evil to prevail.
Also “I just wanna shut my brain off and have fun without POLITICS” is not really a moral high ground. Many people can’t avoid politics.
Also “I just wanna shut my brain off and have fun without POLITICS” is not really a moral high ground. Many people can’t avoid politics.
May I suggest stepping outside for a while. Unless you’re actually involved in the job, a level of obsession to the point where you can’t enjoy a night out without getting politics involved is unhealthy.
I think you missed my point or I communicated badly. If you are, for example, queer, being outside with your partner is considered political
I have no idea, but my wife says she thinks her and her boyfriend have a no politics pact.
That’s fair too. Not everyone gives a shit about politics. I really didn’t until Dementia DonOLD the racist rapist with 34 felonies got elected and made us the laughing stock of the world. I will say that throughout my life I’ve noticed things are noticeably better when we have a Democrat President.
Funny how that seems to be the case. But — and I’m OOTL here — I know Taylor dislikes Trump to the point of arguing with her parent’s and managers about going public with that. I also hear her boyfriend and his family are Republicans. So it may be just to forestall a war between themselves or their fans, they both just agreed to sit politics out this year.
That would be really disappointing. Taylor shouldn’t let her guy silence her. But I get it. My wife and I don’t talk religion because she’s religious and I’m vehemently atheist. It works. We have five kids and a happy marriage. Maybe that’s all Taylor and whatshisname want, too.
taylor swift gets up on stage in front of tens of thousands of people on a regular basis. she doesn’t have secret service protection for every public appearance.
draw whatever conclusions you want from those two facts.
She might be able to afford better security than the Secret Service.
She plays big stadiums & arenas. There aren’t really any slight lines to the stage that aren’t inside the facility. Trump was giving a speech in a field, with neighboring buildings outside the security perimeter.
TL;DR: Taylor Swift draws bigger crowds than Donald Trump, and is probably safer for it.
She also doesn’t get up in front of her crowds and go on news programs and spew nothing but hate and lies that inspire violence.
So all she has to do is to arm swifties with automatic weapons? Problem solved… :D
… she’s proudly left leaning.
She’s a billionaire. She’s no more left leaning than Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. She just flies socially progressive flags.
I’d argue there’s a pretty big difference between someone like Bezos and someone like swift. Specifically, it’s almost impossible to make a billion dollar business without exploiting people, and Bezos definitely exploited the hell out of people.
In contrast, I don’t think it would be accurate to say that Swift made her money by exploiting people. Of the ethical ways to make money, I would think selling albums that you wrote and performed, and tickets to concerts that you’re performing would rank pretty highly.
Additionally, a significant portion of her wealth is the valuation of her music catalog being extremely high on account of being a very popular musician.I’m not saying she’s the most left person in the world or anything, but not aggressively exploiting people, giving a lot of money to charities, and actively championing progressive causes definitely classifies someone as “left leaning” in my book.
Billionaires should not exist, full stop. They literally cannot spend that amount of money.
She could lower the cost of her music, her tour tickets, merchandise…
I love Taylor Swift too but just because she has progressive views doesn’t mean she didn’t extract wealth from people and is hoarding it for herself.
I’m willing to eat my hat if she donates 2/3 of her wealth right now and promises to never have more than a few million in total assets.
But she isn’t. And that makes her a bad billionaire.
If she lowered the price of her tour tickets it would just increase demand (without a commensurate increase in supply, since concert venue size and the number of shows she has time to put on both have limits) and thus further enable scalpers.
Lowering the prices of music sales or merch would be more feasible, but would be relatively complicated due to messing with supply/demand/product quality/employee & supplier compensation, etc. (For example, it could arguably be better to keep the merch prices the same or even raise them, but have the manufacturer increase worker wages or something like that.)
Rather than sit around hoping that she more fairly allocates profits of her own accord, if the societal goal is to prevent billionaires then the easiest way to ensure that would be via government policy, by increasing her income tax.
So, two things: I never said people should be billionaires, I said there’s a difference between her and Bezos. You can’t pretend that a $12 album, or Spotify streaming costs are the same as making people pee in jugs for minimum wage. One of them is actually doing things that people like in exchange for money, and people are saying “yes, I would like to spend my disposable income on this luxury good” often enough that she has more wealth than she can ever spend. Extracting wealth isn’t the same as exploitation.
Second, if you exclude the value of her music catalog, she’s not a billionaire. If she sold every piece of real property she owned, and gave away every last penny, he net worth would still be in excess of $500M on account of that. It doesn’t seem quite fair to say that someone is terrible because the things they made are worth more than an arbitrary line of “a few million”. Saying that someone is hoarding by just owning something they made that people say is worth a lot of money is judging someone for something largely out of their control.
None of this has anything to do with someone being “left leaning” in any case. Left leaning isn’t some short hand for ethical purity of being a member of the proletariat or even the working class. Saying that someone who publicly and materially supports progressive causes is “left leaning” seems pretty fair and reasonable.
I don’t particularly care about swift being some bastion of goodness. I also don’t actually care if someone has a billion dollars. I do care if they exploited people to get it. I care if they exploited people to get less than a billion. So lumping people together by the number without focusing on the conduct misses the point.
Very well put
Edit: downvotes for agreeing with an upvoted comment is interesting
I’d say that her bonus payout to her tour staff shows that isn’t the case.
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She made a billion by selling tickets to huge venues all over the world where she performed.
She actually did work to get rich, unlike Bezos, who steals his wealth from his workers.
I guarantee she exploits people like any other capitalist, but there are different types of billionaires.
Rowling used to seem like a “good billionaire” too. Then she went all TERF-y.
Swift may seem cool for now, but let’s not put away the guillotines just yet.
Okay? Everyone seems fine until they don’t seem fine. That’s not unique to billionaires or particularly insightful.
No one’s canonizing anyone here. Saying there’s a difference between “one of the most popular musicians ever” having a lot of money and “exploitative businessman notable for particularly exploitative working situations” who has two orders of magnitude more isn’t some preening hero worship.
I’m fine with that. The guillotine can always stay our regardless of who it is and.how much we currently like them.
Not if you read her work, she didn’t. It was filled with racist tropes.
I am just starting to see that, after having grown up on it. Any recommendations on good analysis’s?
I’m a fan of Alton Brown and Kenji López-Alt
I love you.
Americas test kitchen/cooks country is great. Internet shaquille is also excellent.
He looks gross and old is how he looks
That would be so glorious
He has pissed off an actual billionaire.
One that doesn’t like him and knows how to sue the shit out of people. It’s a war that she can win too.
Them that has, gets.
Isn’t that one rule of being rich, don’t piss off the other rich people?
Because you either end up dead or poor which to some can be worse
Get her Jade!
Just another lawsuit he won’t pay.
Once again will lose property he doesn’t own
Maybe she can do to him what theyve all tried and failed to do
Get him to pay?
Get him behind bars in a jumpsuit that matches his fake tan
I don’t think this kind of civil suit can result in jailtime. But depending on what strategy her lawyers pursue, they could argue the unauthorized use of her IP resulted in his campaign raising additional money, and thus be legal grounds for them to empty the campaign warchest and take away funds his campaign needs to operate just a few months before the election.
The simple fact that she can hire better lawyers than him should have him scared that there’s actual consequences at stake.
As much as we like to fantasize about an actual billionaire siccing her lawyers at the fake billionaire: She didn’t become a billionaire by just siccing her very expensive lawyers at just any Donald. You need to make sure the siccee can pay the damages, which I’m not sure this one can.
New Republic - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for New Republic:
MBFC: Left - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceWow he also looks like absolute shit apparently
Weird, weak DonOLD.
Again! Still!
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Wait…. You can express this through the medium of emoji?
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
He’s looked like shit since the first time I ever saw him in home alone 2
Doesn’t he always?
Who could have seen this coming?
FTA:
“I don’t know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them,” Trump told Fox Business correspondent Gary Trimble after his campaign event in Asheboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday. “I didn’t generate them.”
Hmm… why do I get the feeling that he generated them?
You really think he even knows how?
Fair enough, someone probably helped him. What I don’t believe is that he wasn’t involved at all and the pictures just landed in his lap.
I can believe it, he “owns” a Social media site / safe space. People probably post that shit all the time there.
I’ve heard Baron is pretty good with the cyber. Maybe he helped.
this guy can barely type into the twiiter app. he cant spell ai. theres no fucking way he did anything but receive the material from his underlings
To each their own, but I think that’s giving him too much of a break. My saying “he generated it” was perhaps a poor choice of words so I’ll clarify; I think he 100% knew that this was a fake image, knows who generated it, and was complicit in spreading disinformation.
What I don’t believe is that some random person he doesn’t know said “hey look at this”, and then he got excited and started sharing the image. He wrote something to the effect of “I accept!”, and as dumb as the man is, I believe that he knows damn well that endorsements don’t happen like that.
But they were posted under HIS account with HIS name on it. Put this action together with all the unauthorized uses of copyrighted misic and you have a pattern. He might not be doing it himself but he’s not telling his staff to stop it.
im not sayin it isnt his responsibility for distributing it. but i think its comical to think he came up with the idea, or even had a hand in the generation.
one of his morons did it, brought it to him and he ran with it. hes surrounded by sycophants who come up with these ideas all day long like the gold sneakers and the freakin bibles.
For the most part I don’t believe in copyrights.
Well I don’t know about you, my kin, but now that DMBFFF has finally revealed what we have SO DESPERATELY YEARNED to know… I can finally rest.
For years, we have suffered under the relentless and permeating stench of existential agony.
As the years dutifully wielded their swift, ruthless axe, I witnessed a slow withering away of my core essence. Some nights I found myself suddenly awake in my parlor hall/grand salon, saturated in my own perspiration, and paralyzed by an insatiable CRAVING for just a mere CRUMB of this omniscient seraph’s divine legal analysis.
The wait is over. The time hath arrived.
Let us gather 'round and immortalize this transcendental occasion in stone, etch it into the chronicles of time, and shout it from the rooftops:
DMBFFF does not believe in copyrights, for the most part.
Countrymen, I stand here, humbled, profoundly enlightened, and blissfully thankful. My shackles have been cast off, and I find the only fetter that remains is my inexorable, cathartic weeping. I lament the helpless filigree surface of this imported, hand-carved ebony bespoke table; this piece of art is now baptized by the salty rivers of my gratitude.
The caustic succubus of ignorance - that vile wretch! - is at last banished to the shadows, and we, my brethren, are poised to burgeon forth into the ether with a vigor so renewed, so incandescent, that even the stars would dim in envy.
“God darn it, Mr. Lamar, you use your tongue prettier that a $20 whore!”
That’s some mighty fine ritin’ there, mister. 😁🙂
Okay? I don’t see how that’s relevant in any way.
This isn’t the first time there was report of Trump using material from someone who got rich in an industry that lords over its supposed “intellectual property rights” and that person either sues Trump or threatens to do so.
What if Harris wanted to use music from Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, or Kanye ironically?
He isn’t using her music, though. He’s using her image. I think there is a case here, but it isn’t a copyright case.
In the US, an image is under copyright unless the owner releases it into the public domain or like; and if you’re referring to trademark, that’s probably worse.
That’s nice. Neither does Trump! At least not other people’s.
He uh… really should be. She is legit rich as all fuck and has a lot of reasons to want to crack down on anything “AI” of her.
But also? He has all but guaranteed that T-swizzle openly endorses Kamala (rather than all but endorsing her). She is pretty unapologetically liberal and… spite is a hell of a drug.
Like, if you have to piss off a fanbase? Go after the k-pop fans before you go after Taylor Swift.
Trump about to learn what it looks like when an actual billionaire who hires quality lawyers (and pays them!) takes legal action against someone. For a guy who abused the courts for decades to bully people into doing what he wants, he sure is getting bent over the stand a lot these days.
