Stephen A. Smith: Taylor Swift’s Harris endorsement matters

(NewsNation) — ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith said he believes Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Harris will have an influence on the 2024 election.

“It matters to tens if not hundreds of millions of kids out there who are of voting age,” Smith said Wednesday night on NewsNation’s “CUOMO.”

Smith, who has attended Swift’s concerts with his daughters, said witnessing the singer’s following was “the closest thing” he’s ever seen to Michael Jackson’s following.

“So when she comes out the night of the debate, as a young woman supporting Harris,” Smith said, “it’s probably an incredibly profound thing to have happened. The Swifties, they’re gonna gravitate to what she wants to some degree.”

Minutes after the end of the first debate between former President Trump and Harris, Swift endorsed the Democratic candidate in a long Instagram post.

“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” Swift wrote. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”

The endorsement came as a surprise to the Harris campaign, a campaign official confirmed to NewsNation. Harris exited a watch party with second gentleman Doug Emhoff to a Swift song.

The singer said she needed “to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter” after AI-generated photos of her endorsing Trump’s presidential run were posted to his site.

“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift, one of the music industry’s biggest stars, wrote. “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

Just before the Democratic National Convention kicked off, Trump reposted an image of Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit and accepted her endorsement for his campaign, which she had never given.

Swift, who remains on her world tour, made no endorsements until Tuesday night. Given her influence and millions of fans, Swift has often become a trending political topic during election years.

Swift has a dedicated following, especially among young women, a key demographic in the November election.

“I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades,” Swift wrote on Instagram.

She included a picture of herself holding a cat and signed the message “Childless Cat Lady,” a reference to comments made by Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.

In 2020, she supported President Joe Biden, writing a month before the election that she was going to be cheering for then-vice presidential nominee Harris, this year’s Democratic nominee, in her debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. She also was openly critical of Trump ahead of the 2020 election, saying he had stoked “the fires of white supremacy and racism.”

NewsNation’s Damita Menezes contributed to this report.