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Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be feeling confident after Tuesday night’s (Sept. 10) first, and possibly only, debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump. In video from the Democratic presidential candidate’s watch party, Harris was seen addressing the crowd following what many pundits called was her commanding performance in the often tense 90-minute showdown with the twice-impeached former President, telling them, “Hard work is good work and we will win, we will win!”
But more pointedly, Harris then walked off the stage to a very apropos Taylor Swift song, shortly after the pop superstar gave her enthusiastic endorsement to the Democratic ticket of Harris and her VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. As the audience cheered, Harris exited the party with Swift’s 2019 female empowerment anthem “The Man” blasting through the speakers.

In the same way that Swift is fond of conjuring diamond-precise mic drop moments that speak for themselves, Harris’ choice of the Lover track said it all without her having to say anything else. “I’d be a fearless leader/ I’d be an alpha type/ When everyone believes ya/ What’s that like?” Swift sings on the tune about society’s chauvinistic double standards.

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“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man/ And I’m so sick of them coming at me again/ ‘Cause if I was a man/ Then I’d be the man,” goes the chorus to the song blasted out of the speakers at the party celebrating Harris, who is vying to become the nation’s first female President.

The Swift nod came after the singer threw her hat in the ring to endorse the Swift/Walz ticket. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Swift wrote on Tuesday night just minutes after the end of the debate that marked the first-ever meeting between convicted felon Trump and former prosecutor Harris. “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.”

Swift’s endorsement also got the thumbs-up from Walz. “I am incredibly grateful to Taylor Swift and I say that as a fellow cat owner,” Walz told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow after she read him Swift’s lengthy, heartfelt Instagram statement that was signed “childless cat lady” in the feline-loving singer’s not-so-subtle dig at Trump VP pick JD Vance’s belittling description of what he described as the Democratic party’s voting base in a 2021 interview.

“That was eloquent and that was clear and that’s the type of courage we need in America to stand up,” Walz continued. “We’ve seen it out of those Republicans who were at the DNC. We’ve seen it out of women who would like to have their personal lives kept personal but are forced to go out there because they nearly died because they can’t get abortion services in a pregnancy. And now you have somebody like Taylor Swift coming out making that very clear. This would be the opportunity, Swifties: KamalaHarris.com, get on over there, get things going.”

Shortly after the Swift endorsement, Harris’ official X account reposted the singer’s statement, writing, “Ready for it,” along with a heart hands emoji.

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.

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“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.”