Sandler hosted, Trump roasted.
The White House went into Taylor Swift overdrive on Friday, posting a meme appropriating the Swift-Travis Kelce wedding at Madison Square Garden.
In an Instagram post Friday evening, the White House parodied the Garden’s purple digital billboard of Swift and Kelce’s “JUST&T Married” by replacing it with the message “Trump Is Your President,” alongside similar text of “It’s happened!” — an addition that makes sense only if you think about it for fewer than two seconds.
The post follows one from Thursday night in which a collage of all-American images like Iwo Jima and the Miracle on Ice are dominated by an image of Trump, beneath the caption of “America’s Eras Tour,” parodying Swift’s poster for the 2023 concert behemoth. It even included Taylor’s “It’s a long time coming line” from that barnstorm.
The specter of a wedding on a national holiday seemed to rankle a Swift-sensitive president: The White House on Friday also posted two videos to X montage-ing moments in American history with some repurposing of Swift. One proclaimed “Next in America’s Eras Tour” while another touted “America’s greatest hits, one era at a time.”
Compared to some of the other celebrity tolls Trump has engaged in — just this week he posted an AI video of himself as a doctor treating Julia Roberts and Robert De Niro for “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — this proved to be pretty tame and even had an air of grudging blessing. There’s a reason for that.
Trolling liberal movie stars is a risk-free bet for the president and an easy score with his base. Going after Swift, however, requires more of a shadowbox for Trump, who knows that plenty of people in swing states where he is backing candidates look up to her and her liberal views, and that a war with her could turn out a vote against him. That’s why he has said he wishes the couple well (but also predicted they would not last).
While it may or may not have been intentional, Swift’s choice of a grand, musician-heavy affair on a July 4 weekend that Trump had imagined for his own concert ambitions also may have landed as an affront. The president had planned on a big Freedom 250 concert but soon saw even musicians like Martina McBride and Bret Michaels — hardly progressive firebrands — drop out because they didn’t want to be associated with the partisan celebration.
Meanwhile at the Garden Friday Stevie Nicks and Paul McCartney were planning to take the stage alongside the nation’s biggest pop star. And in front of a who’s-who of liberal entertainers, in what will surely be the world’s first pop concert to feature a wedding pronouncement from Billy Madison.
Swift seems to have an unusual ability to get to Trump, free rent, living in his mind. After Trump in 2024 posted a deepfake of Swift endorsing him over Kamala Harris, she clarified that she didn’t do that, prompting him to post: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
While she’s been largely quiet this term, Swift did speak out strongly against Trump during the height of BLM protests in 2020, accusing him of “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency” and vowing he would be voted out in the fall. Trump responded with a series of comments how he liked her less and less; he would later say that her liberal views would cause her to “pay a price…in the marketplace,” a sum she does not seem to be expending.
Ironically, Swift’s 1,000-person wedding, with musical performances involving the host on a grand arena stage, is exactly the kind of spectacle Trump might appreciate if he oversaw it.
Of course, the fact that he’s not could be exactly what rankles.
