Donald Trump called into Fox & Friends before 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning (Sept. 11) to talk about Tuesday night’s (Sept. 10) debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, and while the hosts listened as he gave his spin on how he did in what may be the only time he faces off against his Democratic opponent, the most burning question was obvious.
What did Trump think of Taylor Swift‘s enthusiastic endorsement of Harris in the moments after the debate ended?
“Well, I actually like, uh… Mrs., uh [laughs] I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better if you want to know the truth. She’s a big trump fan,” Trump said, in seeming reference to Brittany Mahomes, wife of Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Current co-owner and former soccer player who was swept into Swift’s orbit last year when the singer began dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
“I was not a Taylor swift fan, it was just a question of time. She couldn’t, uh, you couldn’t possibly endorse Biden. You look at Biden you couldn’t possibly endorse him,” Trump continued during the interview in which he described Brittany as “the wife of the great quarterback.”
“But she’s [Swift] a very liberal person, she seems to always endorse a democrat and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” Trump continued of the star who is about to wrap up her sold-out Eras Tour, which is on track to be one of the highest-grossing tours in music history. “But no, I like Brittany, I think Brittany’s great. Brittany got a lot of news last week she’s a big MAGA fan, that’s the one I like much better than Taylor Swift.”
Up until last week, the women were frequently seen passionately cheering on their significant others from luxury boxes across the country on game day. However, it appeared they were at a distance from each other during last Thursday’s Chiefs season kick-off, a week after Brittany Mahomes drew criticism for appearing to like a Trump Instagram post outlining his party’s 2024 platform.
Convicted felon Trump quickly thanked Mahomes for her apparent support, writing on his Truth Social platform, “I want to thank beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me, and the fact that MAGA is the greatest and most powerful Political Movement in the History of our now Failing Country.”
Mahomes later responded to criticism of her like by saying in an Instagram Story, writing, “I mean honestly, To be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood. There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.”
Despite what appeared to be a chill in the friendship, just days later, the two women were spotted hugging it out at the U.S. Open on Sunday, seemingly dousing rumors of a rift.
Trump, who insisted to the Fox & Friends crew that he decisively won the debate, calling it “my best debate, actually,” was widely criticized by media pundits for his often rambling, vague answers during the tense, 90-minute showdown in which he frequently talked over the moderators. While Harris repeatedly pushed back on what she described as Trump’s “same old tired playbook” of lies and obfuscations, many pundits zeroed in on the twice-impeached former President’s false claim that Haitian immigrants are “eating dogs.. eating the cats,” an internet rumor that that debate co-moderator David Muir swiftly fact-checked in real time.
The bizarre, debunked rumor had been amplified a day earlier by Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who feline fan Swift took a playful swipe at in her Harris endorsement by signing off as a “childless cat lady.” The latter was a reference to one of Vance’s controversial 2021 claims that Democrats were promoting an “antifamily” agenda led by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Before Tuesday night, Swift had not endorsed a candidate yet in the 2024 presidential election, despite backing the 2020 ticket of President Joe Biden and Harris after a career in which she largely avoided weighing in on politics until Trump entered the White House in 2016. In her statement, the singer said her endorsement was driven, in part, by a false AI-generated image purporting to show her endorsing Trump that the former one-term president shared on his social feeds last month.
“It really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
