The “View” co-hosts are rolling their eyes at a conspiracy theory that’s made its way onto mainstream media that claims Taylor Swift is secretly working with the Pentagon to push a political agenda.
“You people worry about the weirdest stuff,” Whoopi Goldberg said on the ABC talk show Thursday in response to a segment that aired on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” earlier this week.
“She got people to go out and vote, including probably all kinds of people that you rather not have voting. … If she can get people to do that, why would you say that was a bad thing or talk about it like you were disparaging it?”
Jesse Watters presented the theory on his show Tuesday night, asking his viewers, “Have you ever wondered how or why 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 psy-op for combatting online misinformation.”
The news anchor, 45, then played a clip from a meeting held by NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a multinational hub for cyber defense, in August 2019.
The presenter told the meeting attendants at the time that “social influence can help promote or encourage behavior change,” and then cited Swift, 34, because she was “fairly influential online.”
The Grammy winner has indeed proven to have great influence over her fans and followers; she got more than 35,000 people to register to vote last September after directing her users to Vote.org via her Instagram Story on National Voter Registration Day.
However, as “View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out, the influence is likely due to how much fans like her work – and not the fact that she’s a government “asset” as Watters implied.
“Her music is great, they’re bops, we love it,” the former White House director of strategic communication said on her talk show Thursday.
Sunny Hostin speculated that Republicans are trying to bring down Swift because she is not on their side.
“My theory is that Taylor was born in Tennessee, she kind of started out as a country music, pop princess and I think that the Jesse Watters of the world thought she was their princess,” the attorney, 55, began.
“All of a sudden [Swift] decides to endorse a democrat in Tennessee, she was in support of March for Our Lives against gun violence, supported the LGBTQ community in her music videos and she said, ‘I’m pro-choice,’ and then she said, ‘And vote.’ They picked the wrong princess.”
Goldberg, 68, concluded, “I’m tired of dumb people. I can’t handle it.”
Since Watters’ segment aired, a spokesperson for the Pentagon released a statement on the theory.
Sabrina Singh told Politico on behalf of the Department of Defense Wednesday, “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off,” cheekily referring to Swift’s 2014 hit song.
