Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd, and I've got a bone to pick with Taylor Swift, something her and her fans are sure to respond to reasonably with no hatred in their hearts whatsoever. Because honestly, what I am about to say is not said with any hatred in my heart and genuinely comes from a place of concern for our country and, honestly, her public image. '

I don't know if you guys have noticed lately, but the worlds of music and politics these days are crossing over in ways that are tough to ignore. Most recently, with multiple instances of the Trump administration using pretty popular songs from chart topping and legendary artists to push their propaganda through various promotional videos or pieces of AI slop, even TikToks and short form vertical type video. And thankfully, Most of these examples recently have been met with very active and aggressive responses from these artists, rejecting the use of their hard work, their art, their copyrighted material, and essentially hitting the administration with lawyers, with paperwork, with cease and desists to basically stop the use of their work in its tracks.

Recent examples include that of Olivia Rodrigo, MGMT, and Metallica as well. They're certainly not the only artist whose work the Trump administration has been using to normalize their bigotry, their hatred, and their fascist agenda. However, there has been a weirdly deafening silence whenever it has come to the usage of Taylor Swift's music, believe it or not.

For example, right now on the White House TikTok account, there's a bunch of text and propagandist images playing against "The Fate of Ophelia" from Taylor's latest record. And there have been other disturbing and concerning usages as well of the tracks "Father Figure" as well as "Opalite". So the usages are there, and the music is most definitely being used to push a narrative. And again, the fact that this is happening, continuing to happen, and basically just existing unabated is just very curious and very odd, given a couple of things.

One, not only the fact that Trump has taken a very hostile stance against Taylor Swift on numerous occasions on social media. I mean, that alone should be enough to raise this woman's ire. I mean, she's certainly gone after other people, either in interviews or in her own music for less. But on top of that, Taylor Swift is somebody who historically is known to be pretty litigious when it comes to protecting her music and her copyright. I mean, this is a woman who whipped the entire music industry up into a frenzy over her not owning her own masters and had everyone, me included, cheering her on as she went through the process of re-recording all of her older albums, only for her to end up buying the whole catalog anyway, which, I mean, frankly, is something I'm happy she was able to do.

This is something I and many other people supported her in because of the sanctity of the creative process and the necessity that she control her music in the way that she saw fit, which is a position and a perspective that even her more skeptical fans supported her in, despite the fact that Taylor's insistence on enforcing her copyright has been used against people as powerless as Etsy creators, as well as quietly behind the scenes, making sure that her and Jack Antonoff even St. Vincent got credit on Olivia Rodrigo's song, "Deja Vu", over, I guess, allegedly, some similarities that it had with "Cruel Summer".

So again, Taylor is someone who, historically, is very sensitive to and aware of when she is being ripped off and when someone else is using her music and her ideas to their own personal benefit. And yet, as the Trump administration does it, she is standing there silent, not doing anything. And regardless of what her reasoning at this point may be, I've got to say, the outcome here is disappointing because it's inconsistent, and in terms of her public image, it's unflattering.

Now, with that being said, I want to steal man my argument a little bit here because I know there will be some Taylor Swift defenders in the comments who will pretend that I'm asking for something unreasonable here and that Taylor, by virtue of ignoring Donald Trump, using her music to push his agenda, she's somehow playing 4D chess because an engagement, a response, a call out is exactly what he wants. You don't get it.

Okay, first off, in terms of what the Trump administration wants, to operate uninterrupted and unabated is most likely their biggest preference here, which is exactly what they're doing so long as Taylor Swift says and does nothing. Number two, what I'm asking for and expecting from Taylor at this point is not this giant soapbox speech, though, that would be nice. It's not an endorsement of everything I believe. Again, I feel like the bare minimum of hitting this man and the administration with as much lawyer power as she possibly can would be more than enough.

Because if you've done any analysis of how exactly we have gotten to this point as a country over the past 10 yearss, one of the key channels through which the Trump administration has been able to normalize its hateful and bigoted agenda against queer people, against immigrants, against minorities of all types and stripes against women, too, is funneling it through pop culture and making what they do and think and stand for seem cool by proximity of what they're able to put it next to, be it memes, be it mainstream music or whatever.

By allowing the usage of her music in this way, Taylor is allowing that process to continue, even if we're to tell ourselves the fairy tale that Taylor's entire listening audience is nothing but women who hate Trump. When if we look at the statistics, Taylor's fan base is mostly white women. White women love voting for Trump, which is exactly why the use of her music in this way must be rejected, because if Taylor's response to this is that it's essentially not really that big of a deal, there are going to be people guaranteed that also see the further empowerment of Trump as not that big of a deal, which, just to stress, it is, considering that he just tweaked We did the other day in support of the execution of his political opponents.

I'm sure you've heard phrases used very recently in the past few years, like we're living in historical times, we're crossing the Rubicon, we've gone over a certain threshold. Not to stale these takes out or anything, but we really are actually doing that. And one of the only things we can do to prevent that continued backsliding is to openly reject and denounce this stuff whenever it pops up. And again, I'm not even looking for or expecting that from Taylor at this point. Merely just doing everything she possibly can to prevent this guy from furthering his agenda using her music would be nice.

Again, there are multiple options and approaches Taylor could take to this situation. Not all of them involve a head-to-head with Donald Trump in the octagon. Nobody wants or is expecting that. As entertaining as that would be with Taylor's known experience in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, she is a black belt after all. But yeah, I'm going to leave it there for now. Let me know what your thoughts about all of this are in the comments below. I'm sure you will.

Fantano, Taylor Swift, Opalite, forever.