US singer Taylor Swift performs during her concert as part of The Eras Tour at the Johan Cruijff ArenA in Amsterdam, on July 4, 2024. (Photo by Robin van Lonkhuijsen / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT (Photo by ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s stunning victory Tuesday either sent Kamala Harris’s celebrity supporters into social media meltdowns or left them trying to articulate their grief and disbelief.
Some pro-Harris stars remained silent, perhaps numbed by the realization that 72 million Americans — or 51% of voters — didn’t just reject their chosen candidate but helped to repudiate a belief in celebrities’ power to influence culture, politics and people’s voting choices.
Cardi B lashed out at a fan who said on Instagram Live that she should appear at Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
“I swear to god I’m gonna (expletive) you up, get away from me,” said the Grammy-winner rapper who stumped for Harris at a rally in Wisconsin last week.
LeBron James expressed his concerns about the potential threat a second Trump presidency poses to women’s reproductive rights by sharing a photo of himself with his 10-year-old daughter. The NBA champion said: “HEAVY ON MY HEART & MIND THIS AM MY PRINCESS !! PROMISE TO PROTECT YOU WITH EVERYTHING I HAVE AND MORE!! WE DONT NEED THEIR HELP!”
Billie Eilish echoed that view, saying on Instagram, “It’s a war on women,” while Christina Applegate told people on X to “unfollow me if you voted against female rights. Against disability rights.” Ariana Grande more gently said, “Holding the hand of every person who is feeling the immeasurable heaviness of this outcome today.”
Meanwhile, other entertainment and sports icons have thus far said nothing to their hundreds of millions of fans or social media followers — notably Taylor Swift, who triggered Elon Musk so much than he threatened to impregnate her after she endorsed Harris in September with a “childless cat lady” reference. But ditto for Bad Bunny, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and Harrison Ford, who recorded a video, warning voters about the grave threat Trump presented to democracy.
With Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket in July, her campaign became a magnet for celebrities and she became the “coolest thing in pop culture,” as she fought former President Trump, another celebrity from his days as a reality TV star and a New York City tabloid figure.
Harris’ campaign expected that endorsements from stars with Gen-Z appeal could help the former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General and US Senator sell her candidacy to stars’ youthful fans, especially to young women who could be excited about the prospect of electing the first female president.
But in the post-election autopsy of Harris’ defeat, writers and political experts spoke about the conflicting ideas about the role of celebrity in presidential politics — whether it’s useful for candidates to be celebrities themselves or to be able to wrap themselves in the glow of their celebrity associations.
Margaretha Bentley, a professor at Arizona State University whose classes have studied the social importance of Swift, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: “In academic literature, research has shown that, while celebrity endorsements can increase civic engagement and voter registrations, it has not proven to have a direct impact on how people make their voting decisions.”
Seth Abramovitch, a senior writer at the Hollywood Reporter, suggested to The Guardian that Harris’ endorsements didn’t help her widen her support because they came from celebrities who were preaching to the choir: “Oprah, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Ariana Grande — these are artists whose audiences (black, female, liberal, queer) were already inclined to vote for Kamala,” Abramovitch said.
Abramovitch explained how Swift could have been an exception to this rule because her career in both country and pop music gives her fans on both sides of the American political divide. Her romance with Travis Kelce also may have brought her new fans from NFL world.
“Yet I’d argue her massive influence does not reach two key demographic groups that helped Trump win this time – Latinos and black men,” Abramovitch said.
But more than underperforming with Latinos and Black men, Harris also underperformed with “almost every kind of young person,” wrote Peter Hamby in Puck.
“Despite the Brat Summer hype, all the clever and demure posts from KamalaHQ, and the promise of generational change, in the end it turned out that Gen Z wasn’t very interested in Kamala Harris,” Hamby said.
Harris underperformed on 81-year-old Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers with young voters. “Plenty of students” told Hamby that, yes, they couldn’t stand Trump, a convicted felon and alleged insurrectionist who built a political coalition by stoking conspiracy theories and fear along the lines of race, gender, religion and transgender identity.
But students also told Hamby that they didn’t have much affinity for the Democratic Party. As they’ve come of age, the party has been led by aging and “scripted” Boomers like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who haven’t made it easier.
“Barack Obama is a fading memory. Bernie Sanders a lost cause, a curdled meme,” Hamby wrote. Along with Lopez, Harris’ other celebrity supporters included John Legend, Katy Perry and Eminem, who are associated with the Obama years, “when Democrats actually had cultural credibility, when millennials were the tastemakers,” Hamby said. “Those days are no more.”
It also appears that “the days are no more” when the American public necessarily holds celebrities in high regard. There has been a concerted effort by the Republican Party to deride the most popular celebrities as wealthy, liberal elites who don’t understand the concerns of regular people, with Beyonce’s life probably not affected by the price of gas or the inability to buy a first home, as New York University arts professor Laurence F. Maslon told the The Guardian.
Indeed, Maslon said that endorsements probably do “more for the celebrity than the person being endorsed.” He added: “It‘s a way to hitch your star to somebody who seems to be good for you, and maybe there’s a certain kind of reflected glory in that.”
Data also emerged in late October that suggests that Harris’ celebrity endorsements could actually have hurt her campaign. A YouGov poll showed that Swift’s endorsement only made about 8% of voters “somewhat” or “much more likely” to vote for Harris, while 20% said that endorsement would make them less likely to vote for her.
The conclusion of the poll is that many Americans think celebrities should stay out of politics, YouGov said — an idea in line with assertions made by the New York Times’ Peter Baker. Yes, Trump, accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, led a testosterone-driven campaign that capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.
But Trump’s comeback victory also was fueled “by populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites,” Baker wrote.
The elites, of course, include America’s biggest stars in movies, TV, sports and music. This resentment was well illustrated when the 47th president-elect responded to Swift’s Harris endorsement by announcing, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”