Did Trump Say Taylor Swift Would 'Pay a Worth' for Endorsing Harris?

Not lengthy after the Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate ended, pop famous person Taylor Swift posted to Instagram endorsing U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris within the upcoming election. The next morning, former President Donald Trump, Harris’ opponent, was requested in regards to the endorsement throughout a cellphone interview on the Fox Information morning present “Fox & Buddies.”

Trump’s reply was transient, and turned up in even briefer kind in numerous headlines about what he stated. “Donald Trump Says Taylor Swift Will ‘Pay a Worth’ for Endorsing Kamala Harris,” learn the headline in People magazine‘s story. “Donald Trump Thinks Taylor Swift Will ‘Pay a Worth’ for Endorsing Kamala Harris,” reported Glamour. Sky News‘ article was headlined, “Donald Trump says Taylor Swift will ‘in all probability pay a worth’ for endorsing Kamala Harris after debate.”

The quote unfold on social media in addition to within the mainstream information. One publish gained greater than 48,000 upvotes on Reddit. A number of Snopes readers wrote in asking us to fact-check the declare.

By looking social media for clips of the interview, we discovered that Trump did say these precise phrases about Swift. Nevertheless, variations of his assertion that had been foreshortened as within the examples above had been in some circumstances deceptive. The complete quote included vital, extra context that made it clear Trump was not speaking about private revenge, as some readers might have inferred from headlines.

Snopes transcribed the next quote from the “Fox & Buddies” interview (emphasis ours):

“It was only a query of time. [Taylor Swift] could not presumably endorse Biden. … However she’s a really liberal particular person. She appears to all the time endorse a Democrat, and he or she’ll in all probability pay a worth for it within the market.”

When positioned on this context, the quote reveals that Trump predicted Swift would possibly endure economically following the endorsement, not that he needed revenge. Some media outlets did select to incorporate the total quote of their headlines, avoiding any potential confusion about what Trump meant. 

On his social media platform Reality Social, Trump previously posted a faux, AI-generated picture of Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit, and falsely claimed Swift had endorsed him within the 2024 election. Based on Swift’s Instagram publish, she determined to publicly announce she was voting for Harris as a result of she was anxious about potential misinformation following Trump’s publish on Reality Social.

This isn’t the primary time Snopes has investigated supposed inflammatory quotes from Trump whose meanings modified with context. We beforehand fact-checked a quote wherein Trump stated the 2024 election can be a “bloodbath” if he did not win. There, too, the total context modified how Trump’s remarks had been interpreted.

Sources