The Pentagon denies Fox News’ theory that Taylor Swift is a political “asset”

12 January, 2024

The Pentagon has denied rumours spread by Fox News, suggesting that Taylor Swift is a political “asset” for the government.

The conspiracy theory about the pop star arose earlier this week, when news anchor Jesse Watters threw the singer’s mainstream prominence into question and went on a rant about whether she could be part of a psychological operation manufactured by the CIA.

“Taylor Swift is the biggest star in the world… but have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this,” he said at the start of the five-minute-long segment.

He then went on to insinuate that the singer was in cahoots with the government – a scheme which allegedly began when “The Pentagon psyop unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online.”

Here, he played a brief clip from 2019, which he described as a Pentagon employee pitching NATO on Swift as a potential asset due to her role as a powerful influencer.

This was soon disproved by Mediaite, who highlighted that the woman in the video doesn’t work for the Pentagon – she is a research engineer in applied physics at Johns Hopkins University who was giving a presentation at NATO’s International Conference on Cyber Conflict, or CYCON.

Now, a spokesperson for The Pentagon has put the bizarre speculation to rest by quoting one of Swift’s most famous songs.

Making reference to her iconic ‘1989’, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said (via Politico): “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”

“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,” they added.

In his segment, aired on Jesse Watters Primetime, the host went on to admit that neither he nor Fox News had any actual evidence or proof that Swift is a psyop for the government, however, did go on to speculate that her relationship with Travis Kelce may play a role.

Taylor Swift performs onstage on the first night of her "Eras Tour" at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on March 31, 2023.
Taylor Swift performs onstage on the first night of her “Eras Tour” at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on March 31, 2023. CREDIT: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images

Here, he started pointing out that the American football star has used his platform to promote vaccines for Pfizer, as well as recalling the time when President Joe Biden mistook Swift for Britney Spears last year.

Later, he welcomed former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan onto the show to speculate about how the Biden administration might use a figure like Swift.

At time of writing, he has not responded to comments made by The Pentagon spokesperson.

In other Taylor Swift news, at the start of the year, it was reported that her concert film The Eras Tour had officially become the highest-grossing concert movie of all time. As of last week (January 7), it overtook Michael Jackson‘s This Is It with an overall global taking of $261.6million (£206m).

Elsewhere, a course on Taylor Swift at Harvard University has proved so popular that the institution is seeking more teaching assistants to help deliver it.

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