The Kansas City Chiefs won the AFC Championship against the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, meaning they will be facing off against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Feb. 11. It also means that superstar Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his megastar girlfriend Taylor Swift will continue to be front and center in the news.
On Monday, Fox News did a segment with former World Wrestling Entertainment and ESPN host Charly Arnolt. Arnolt, who now works for the Fox News-owned OutKick, came on to proclaim that while “[w]e have had enough of Taylor Swift for now,” we should nevertheless get ready to see some more of Swift and her boyfriend “Mr. Pfizer,” aka Kelce. Arnolt explained that what makes this all “so scary” is that Swift’s fans like her so much they are registering to vote, and might even share some of Swift’s opinions on things like climate change!
There was a recent poll. One-fifth of Taylor Swift fans said they would back whichever candidate that she endorsed. You know, let's be honest, a lot of her fan base are 15-year-old girls who can't vote anyways. A lot of the others are already liberal women who would support the DNC no matter what. But there's a lot of other people who need to be careful, because she doesn't do what she says. Like for example, the other day, yesterday, she flew private from New York City to Baltimore. Yet she constantly talks about climate change. So just please don't believe everything Taylor Swift says. We're all begging you.
Did you get all that? This is a retread story from 2022 when Swift was called out, along with other celebrities, for their use of private air travel, meaning she had a large carbon footprint. Swift’s spokesperson has addressed some of those concerns by saying that the singer purchases carbon credits to offset tour travel, but the hope is that celebrities like Swift and other megarich people can do more.
But what exactly are Arnolt and Fox News arguing for here? The only answer could be that Swifties who have registered en masse to vote in the upcoming election should not vote at all. Arguing that Swift isn’t the poster child for climate change while offering up Donald Trump, with his horrific history of environmental policies and climate data handling along with the Republican Party and its never-ending brigade of climate deniers, can only mean one thing: Arnolt is “begging you” not to vote.
Like all right-wing hustlers pundits, Arnolt is an interesting messenger to be calling someone out for supposedly being disingenuous. Before Arnolt left the WWE and then ESPN, she was known for being something of a LGBTQ+ ally.
After leaving ESPN for the conservative-leaning OutKick, Arnolt attacked transgender athletes like Lia Thomas and claimed she was restricted from letting her transphobic freak flag fly while broadcasting for her former employer. Arnolt has stuck with her hacky anti-trans material and even added some truly misinformed anti-vaccine hooey. Some older fans of Arnolt describe her so-called evolution as “right-wing grifting.”
Many people thought the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory on Sunday was the worst news for Detroit Lions fans. They would be wrong—it was even worse for Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, who are terrified by Swift’s very tangible ability to get young fans to register to vote.
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