Taylor Swift has been at the center of unhinged discourse in several areas this week, and as per usual, she didn’t ask to be involved in any of it.
Jo Koy thought it was a good idea to lamely joke about the NFL’s coverage of Swift at the 2024 Golden Globes and was met with a now-memed Swift reaction. Selena Gomez whispered some hot gossip to Swift, and people went to the ends of the Earth to discern whether Gomez dared invoke Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet, and then Gomez shared what she really said (allegedly). And Page Six reported that Swift and Travis Kelce, her two-time Super Bowl-winning boyfriend, “plan to get engaged this summer.”
All of which is to say, only in the life of Taylor Swift could Jesse Watters’ unhinged conspiracy theory claiming Swift is secretly “an asset” for the Pentagon could be buried in the news cycle by the end of the week. But to officially put it to rest, the Pentagon released a statement on Wednesday, January 10, to state the obvious.
“As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off,” Pentagon Spokesperson Sabrina Singh said (as per Politico), adding, “But that does highlight that we still need Congress to approve our supplemental budget request as Swift-ly as possible so we can be out of the woods with potential fiscal concerns.”
For those who don’t watch Fox News or have somehow luckily avoided this conspiracy theory until now, the backstory (and yes, I am burying this at the end of this article on purpose): Fox News host Jesse Watters dedicated a Jesse Watters Primetime segment on Tuesday, January 9, to the question, “Why Is Taylor Swift Everywhere?” Plenty of reasonable explanations exist, but instead, Watters went this route, as excerpted below:
“I like her music. She’s alright. But have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this? Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon’s Psychological Operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A PsyOp for combatting online misinformation.”
Right now, Fox is suggesting that Taylor Swift is a psyop because she posted a link to register voters. pic.twitter.com/liR06Qiq2C
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 10, 2024
And now, we wait for Aaron Rodgers’ unsolicited comments on the matter.