It’s not like Donald Trump and Elon Musk have anything better to do with their time—one is currently the sitting president of the United States in his second term, while the other is juggling the reins of X (formerly Twitter), multiple space projects, and playing informal advisor to that same president. But instead of leading the free world or reshaping the future of technology, they’ve decided to dedicate their attention to a peculiar obsession: Taylor Swift. Not her politics. Not her music. Her appearance.
Trump’s disdain for Swift isn’t new. He’s lashed out at her publicly multiple times since at least 2018, when her political allegiance shifted away from the GOP and toward Democratic candidates. Back then, he sulked that he liked her music “25 percent less” after she backed Democrats in Tennessee.
He resurfaced again during this year’s Super Bowl, mocking the fact that Swift got booed during a game featuring the Kansas City Chiefs—conveniently ignoring that he, too, received similar crowd reactions that night. But rather than moving on, the president escalated. On May 16, Trump returned to his favorite punching bag with a now-infamous post on Truth Social, sneering, “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’”
As if her worth, relevance, or beauty hinged on the opinion of a man twice her age with a long track record of disparaging women.
The post went viral, predictably. But what surprised many was who joined in next: Elon Musk. The billionaire tech mogul and owner of X chimed in when a meme account mocked Swift by combining a photo of her performing with a “Pepe the Frog” image holding a ruler next to her backside—a meme steeped in online trolling and body-shaming.
Musk’s response? A laughing emoji. No nuance. No clever jab. Just open mockery, echoing the juvenile tone of the original post and signaling that he was in on the joke.
The backlash was immediate. Reddit lit up with fury. One user accused Musk of blatant body-shaming, another wrote, “They need to leave her the f**k alone,” and a third summed up what many were thinking: “She’s their class peer now as a billionaire, and they hate it.”
Indeed, Swift’s rise to billionaire status—achieved through touring, songwriting, and ownership of her masters—is a new kind of success story, especially for a woman in entertainment who has never relied on tech startups, inherited wealth, or political dynasties. She is self-made in a way that both Trump and Musk seem incapable of acknowledging without mockery or hostility.
Of course, Musk’s fascination with Swift isn’t new either. Back during the 2024 election cycle, when Swift publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, Musk took that personally—despite the fact that he had never been part of her political considerations. Swift had shared a message on Instagram clarifying that a deepfake AI image circulating online falsely showed her endorsing Trump, and that this manipulation motivated her to publicly back Harris.
She ended the post by signing it “childless cat lady,” a direct dig at Republican Senator JD Vance’s earlier insult calling Democratic women a “bunch of childless cat ladies.”
This should’ve been the end of it. But Musk, ever theatrical, replied on Twitter: “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” What began as absurd now bordered on unhinged. The idea of a tech billionaire offering to impregnate a pop star and act as her feline bodyguard blurred the lines between trolling and something deeply inappropriate.
