Donald Trump’s late night social media spree over the upcoming Democratic National Convention and his lackluster Pennsylvania rally had Republican strategists—and Swifties—thinking that the presidential nominee was melting down.
Trump posted at least 25 times to his Truth Social account Sunday night. In numerous separate posts, he shared A.I. images of Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing the Democrat’s team of sharing a misleading video of Trump’s crowd size at his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the day before.
Saturday was intended to be a campaign reset, but instead ended up reinforcing that Trump only knows how to personally belittle his political opponents. Jumping off script from what was supposed to be a speech on economic policy, Trump tapped back into some elementary-grade insults for the Democratic nominee, mocking her as “Comrade Kamala” and complaining that her team would use clips from the event that make it look like he’s “rambling, rambling.”
But that same old song and dance wasn’t enough for his supporters, who began to leave the 8,000-person arena before Trump even finished speaking.
The Trump rally in Pennsylvania was in a stadium that only holds 8k people…there are plenty of empty seats and plenty of people leaving.
— Brad Bo ???????? (@BradBeauregardJ) August 17, 2024
Turn the volume up, you can hear Donald speaking while people are leaving. pic.twitter.com/XvO758uQtM
Seeing unadulterated images of his own crowd size was apparently enough to send Trump into a spiral, claiming over several posts on Truth Social that Harris’s social media operation had inaccurately portrayed his turnout.
“We had to turn away lots of people yesterday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but Comrade Kamala Harris’ Social Media Operation showed empty seats, long before the Rally started, early in the afternoon when, in actuality, we had to turn away 11,500 people!” Trump wrote. “Comrade Kamala is a STONE COLD LOSER, she will FAIL and, if she doesn’t, our Country will cease to exist as we know it, turning into a Communist, Crime Ridden Garbage Dump. November 5th will be the Most Important Date in the History of the U.S.A. It’s as simple as that!…”
That didn’t sit well with political pundits and Republican strategists, who felt the hyperbolic claims and nose-wrinkling urgency made Trump look “nervous.”
“Looks like someone woke up on the gibbering barking panicked side of the bed today,” wrote Lincoln Project senior advisor Jeff Timmer.
But his waning rallies weren’t the only thing on Trump’s mind during his extended social media binge. Bizarrely, Trump also seemed to be in the mood to provoke notoriously litigious pop star Taylor Swift’s notoriously mob-minded fans, sharing an A.I.-generated image of Swift clad in red, white, and blue, posing like Uncle Sam before an American flag emblazoned with the text: “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.”
“I accept!” Trump captioned the image.
Another Swift-related post shared by the former president depicted a group of women marching in “Swifties for Trump” shirts. (The post was labeled satire by its creator.)
“It’s a good thing that Swifties are so cool with people using her image in deep fakes and using AI to make it look like Taylor Swift is doing things she’s not,” posted Republican Representative Jack Kimble. “I’m sure none of them will be mad about this.”
It’s not the first time this summer that Trump has obsessed over Swift. During a closed-door meeting between Trump and House Republicans in June—his first visit to Capitol Hill since before the January 6 insurrection—Trump insisted on discussing the pop phenom, lamenting that she might endorse President Joe Biden while he was still in the race. Days before the meeting, Variety reported that Trump had spoken at length about Swift in a one-on-one interview, describing her as “unusually beautiful.”
Swift has not yet endorsed any candidate in the 2024 election and has been notoriously close-lipped about her political beliefs throughout her career, even through the 2016 presidential election when she was rumored to be a closet Republican. That changed when she sided with Tennessee Democrats in the 2018 midterms against now-Senator Marsha Blackburn. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, Swift said that she didn’t mind getting bad press for railing against Trump, whom she described as a “homophobic racist.”
