Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign mocked former President Donald Trump for his debate performance using the perfect Taylor Swift song in a viral TikTok video.
"I Did Something Bad," featured on Swift's 2017 album Reputation, features the following pointed lyrics:
"I never trust a narcissist/But they love me/So I play 'em like a violin/And I make it look oh so easy" ...
"They say I did something bad/Then why's it feel so good?/They say I did something bad/But why's it feel so good?/Most fun I ever had/And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could/It just felt so good, good"
The campaign posted the video, which shows footage of Harris and Trump at Tuesday night's presidential debate interspersed with a viral post Trump wrote in which he questioned if Harris is "talking about me," and a widely read post-debate article from The Atlantic titled "How Harris Roped a Dope."
You can see the post below.
@kamalahq if a man talks 🤫 then I owe him nothing
Harris's Kamala HQ team also posted it on X.
The first verse of Swift's "I Did Something Bad," particularly the reference to playing a "narcissist" "like a violin," was the perfect soundtrack for the video, referencing the way Harris, throughout the debate, laid traps to bait Trump, which he fell into each and every time.
It's worth noting that ahead of the debate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested in remarks to The New York Times that Harris should "bait" Trump because he "doesn’t know how to respond to substantive, direct attacks.”
And bait him Harris did.
Early on, Trump did indeed "sputter" after Harris suggested his rallies are so boring that his own supporters are leaving them, which of course miffed a man with a historic obsession with crowd sizes who as recently as last week said it's "virtually impossible" to speak at rallies so long without anyone leaving.
Rather than talk about policy—which his GOP allies have begged him to do for weeks—Trump spent minutes of valuable airtime defending the entertainment value of his rallies.
And things only unraveled further from there as Trump jumped from one angry, outlandish claim to the next.
At one point, Trump even claimed that Harris believes in abortion "after the ninth month," repeating the outrageous claims that blue states allow an abortion to be performed after the baby is born—which would be murder. There is no state, nor has there ever been, anywhere in this country that allows babies to be killed after they're born.
And perhaps most egregiously, Trump promoted the unfounded allegation that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were consuming dogs and other household pets in response to a question about immigration:
"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."
All of these statements—and more—served as crystal clear examples of Trump's willingness to traffic in misinformation, especially as it pertains to a nation he once infamously described as a "s**thole country."
People loved every bit of the Harris campaign's shady—and undeniably accurate—post.
The Harris campaign's post also came after Swift endorsed the Harris-Walz campaign—a major development because Swift has used her massive profile to encourage young voters to participate in the electoral process, efforts that have been recognized by political scientists as having a significant impact on key races.
Swift, who said in an Instagram post that she was only recently "made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site," chose to counter misinformation by expressing her support for the Harris-Walz ticket.
She wrote, in part:
"I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for [Harris] 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."
"I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate [Walz], who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades."
Notably, Swift closed out the post by referring to herself as a "Childless Cat Lady," a nod to recently resurfaced misogynistic remarks from former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance that have impacted his favorability.
Swift's post included a link to Vote.gov, the official site run by the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Election Assistance Commission. In the 24 hours following her post, around 406,000 people clicked on the link, according to a GSA spokeswoman. That link was responsible for over half of the approximately 727,000 visitors Vote.gov received between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Two other organizations offering similar voter registration resources also experienced significant traffic surges following Swift’s post.
Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, which operates Vote411.org, reported that by Thursday morning, the number of people using their voter registration tools had more than doubled since Tuesday, with visitors skewing younger than usual.
On Monday, the majority of Vote411.org's visitors were aged 55 to 65. By Wednesday and Thursday morning, the dominant age group had shifted to 18 to 24.
Vote.org, another leading platform, saw a nearly sixfold increase in users registering or verifying their registrations between 9 p.m. and midnight Eastern time on Tuesday, coinciding with both the debate and Swift’s post at around 11 p.m., according to a spokesman.
On Wednesday alone, Vote.org helped over 27,000 people register to vote, compared to an average of 8,865 in the previous eight days, and more than 80,000 verified their registrations, far exceeding the daily average of 16,152.
