It's a Love Story. Why Can’t Republicans Just Say Yes?

Some conservatives, especially those of the extremely-online variety, took one look at the star-studded pairing of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and quickly concluded it was a psy-op. Their conspiracy theories are a mix of griping and trolling; Fox News host Jesse Watters mused that Swift could be “a front for a covert political agenda,” and Vivek Ramaswamy called Swift and Kelce an “artificially culturally propped up couple.” Sometimes, toxic misogyny makes its way in: A far-right comic declared that Kelce must be gay — because why else would a manly man with endless options choose an over-the-hill 34-year-old?

Yes, the taunts — like everything about Swift — are calculated to draw a reaction. And yes, partisan culture drives Republicans to hate anything that liberal-coded celebrities do. But there’s another reason why Trump loyalists — and many others of all political and cultural stripes — would cast doubt on Swift and Kelce in the first place, and why the theories have taken hold enough that the Pentagon felt compelled to bat one down. We’ve been conditioned to question whether any celebrity show of love is truly genuine — especially when it’s associated with politics.

While conservatives are most likely to doubt a pair of mainstream-media darlings, the skeptics extend beyond the MAGA set. At the start of the Kelce-Swift romance, many traditional news outlets interviewed experts about classic PR relationships. A host of “The View” called the pairing a “publicity stunt,” and a USA Today sports columnist wrote that the matchup is “the fakest moment in American history.” On the college website “Her Campus,” a self-described Swiftie outlined the reasons to disbelieve, which included a football conspiracy theory of her own. (Like Swift, she was a Philadelphia Eagles fan, and wondered, tongue-in-cheek, if this was a ploy to distract the Chiefs.)

But once political figures took hold of the idea, the conspiracies only grew wilder, as Ramaswamy’s grand unified theory shows. The logic goes something like this: Because Swift endorsed Biden in 2020 and Kelce has promoted Pfizer vaccines, they’ve come together to lay the groundwork for a high-profile Biden endorsement — which would come after a rigged Super Bowl win for the Kansas City Chiefs. For every liberal who mocked Ramaswamy’s post on X with a picture of a tinfoil hat, a fellow doubter said his theory had a ring of truth, because, in MAGA parlance, “everything is rigged.”

From Ramaswamy to the more casual skeptics, the conspiracy theorizing around Swift and Kelce reveals a deeper anxiety about celebrity and love that feels supercharged when politics are involved.

To all outward appearances, our culture is still built around the ideal of true love. Hallmark Channel movies beat out CNN in ratings last fall. Dating apps promise a shortcut to relationship bliss. TV is loaded with matchmaking shows that peddle a path to marriage: People search for their life partners while separated by opaque walls, wearing ridiculous masks or competing against dozens of other wannabes with bikini bodies and six-pack abs.

But beneath that aspiration are a host of artifacts that suggest we’re not sure whether lasting, monogamous love is really attainable. Marriage rates are on the decline, and surveys show that young Americans are questioning the value of matrimony. A string of conservative books promoting traditional marriage are competing with high-profile books about polyamory. Checkboxes on some dating apps expand the relationship choices to “ethical non-monogamy.” Social platforms make it more possible than ever to build online relationships that substitute for flesh-and-blood ones.

And any doubts about genuine love are even more pitched when it comes to celebrity and entertainment.

Once the cameras disappear, most winning couples on ABC’s “The Bachelor” don’t make it to the actual vows — and some contestants are driven more by fame than by matters of the heart. Plenty of celebrity unions turn out to be shorter-lived or more troubled than the high-gloss version first presented to the public; the various Kardashian pairings and unpairings are a rotating case in point. “There is a lot of distrust in celebrity relationships,” says University of Florida professor Andrew Selepak, who teaches courses on social media and the intersection of media and politics. He chalks up the skepticism to a culture built on artifice — “Social media is at its very core self-image manipulation,” he says — along with a broad mistrust in institutions overall.

There’s no institution less trusted today than politics. And in this arena, it’s even easier to be cynical about love: Happy families are often used as props and image enhancers, and antennae are always out for signs of hypocrisy. Stories of extramarital affairs have toppled campaigns and political careers (though percentage-wise, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of politicians have not been embroiled in infidelity scandals). Hillary Clinton’s critics cite her first lady years in the 1990s — when she didn’t leave her philandering husband — as proof that she cared more about her political ambition than her family life. (They seldom note that Bill Clinton had incentives to stay in the marriage, too.)

Any supposed crack in a relationship can feed the Washington chatter. Today, the internet is awash in rumors that Donald and Melania Trump sleep in separate bedrooms and have renegotiated their prenups. When Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) entered the GOP presidential race, the political world erupted with speculation about whether his then-anonymous girlfriend even existed. (Apparently, she does, and now they are engaged.)

With Swift, a combination of factors has made her a target for the kinds of conspiracy theories now sweeping the internet. There are the public’s standard doubts about celebrity relationships. There’s her history of embedding hidden messages in her lyrics and Instagram posts, which effectively trains her fans to look for connections and Easter eggs everywhere.

And recently, Swift broke her yearslong silence on politics, injecting the conspiracy theories that always swirled around her with rocket fuel. In 2018, she endorsed two Democrats in her home state of Tennessee, citing her support for liberal causes, and in 2020, she posted a photo of herself on Twitter holding a tray of Biden-Harris cookies.

Swift’s growing embrace of her political power makes her newest relationship fertile ground for galaxy-brain ideas about the connections between the media, Hollywood and Washington — and even a proxy argument over voter mobilization. Last September, Swift posted an Instagram story that drove 35,000 people to register to vote on Vote.org. Now, liberals are wondering aloud if the anti-Swift-Kelce rhetoric could backfire and drive a swarm of Swifties to the polls. When flame-throwing comic Owen Benjamin posted that no self-respecting straight man would want to date “a middle aged woman who’s always on tour,” far-left commentator Matt Yglesias pointed out that this was, perhaps, not the best way for conservatives to attract young women.

Social media spats aside, there are plenty of people, across political lines, who truly believe in the Swift-Kelce romance. I flipped through satellite radio in my car one morning this week and landed on the Mad Dog Sports channel, where a deep-voiced host named Adam Shein was waxing poetic about how genuine and joyful it looked when Taylor cheered from the luxury box or snuggled with Kelce on the field. “What’s not to love?” he kept saying, and some conservative callers agreed.

But Selepak cautions against taking any image at face value — on NFL broadcasts, in social media and certainly for a highly-calculated, business-minded celebrity. Just as ordinary mortals curate their social media feeds to project an unrealistically happy life, he says, Swift and her media team are surely aware of how fans will view every appearance in every stadium. “As I teach my students, every media message that you see is a persuasive message,” he told me. “There’s not a single message that you consume that isn’t trying to persuade you of something.”

This is the concept that drives Swift’s doubters, and overall, it’s a compliment: an acknowledgement that, even at the impossibly old age of 34, Swift is smart and savvy enough to bend the media to her goals. The counter-argument is that her goal is entertainment — and that, in the Swift oeuvre, love and art are intertwined. Exuberant love affairs that aren’t as perfect as they seem are a staple in her relatable, irresistibly singable, lucrative body of work. Going by percentages, Kelce will be the subject of a string of songs about heartache someday, and Swift’s sincere well-wishers will lap up the 10-minute version of the saga. And even the cynics can enjoy the ride.