Why Is Taylor Swift Hugging Brittany Mahomes Such a Big Deal?
It was the hug that riled up a million stans. As Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce took in some tennis at the U.S. Open’s men’s final, Swift reminded the world she was still friends with Brittany Mahomes, Trump support be damned. Fans had begun speculating that Brittany — Swift’s fellow WAG and fast friend, married to Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes — had gotten herself booted from the squad over her support of Donald Trump when she wasn’t seen in Swift’s suite at September 5’s Kansas City game. Meanwhile, Swift has remained silent on a presidential endorsement throughout all of this drama.
What happened before the U.S. Open?
It started with an innocuous trip to New York. Kelce had the weekend off since the Chiefs played on Thursday, so he joined Swift for the September 8 match — along with their friends Patrick and Brittany Mahomes. Seeing the foursome together was nothing new after Swift embraced her football WAG-era last season. But it was a bit unexpected, after just a few days before, Swift and Brittany were in separate suites for the Kansas City Chiefs’ first game of the season. Some fans wondered if that meant Brittany’s recent pro-Trump overtures had broken up her friendship with Swift, but nope. The couples buddied it up at the tennis match with Swift and Brittany even exchanging a smiley hug at one point.
— 21 (@21metgala) September 8, 2024
But is Brittany Mahomes a Trump supporter?
She’s certainly not the Trump hater that Swift seemed to be. Last month, fans noticed Brittany had liked a post from Trump on Instagram, laying out the 2024 Republican platform. The post included points like “Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history” and “Keep men OUT of women’s sports.” Brittany, who doesn’t appear to follow Trump, later unliked the post but defended herself against “haters” in an Instagram Story. “I mean honestly, to be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood,” she wrote on August 23. “There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.” As if she wasn’t posting about the biggest hater of them all.
Brittany only dug her heels in further in the following days. She reposted a tweet from a prominent evangelist on her Instagram Story on August 26, reading, “Contrary to the tone of the world today… You can disagree with someone, and still love them. You can have differing views, and still be kind.” Brittany added, “Read that again!” Then, she liked a comment from a pro-Trump influencer under one of her Instagram posts from August 28.
Brittany still hasn’t explicitly endorsed Trump, but the Republican nominee doesn’t seem to mind. He thanked her “for so strongly defending me” in a September 4 post on his social-media network Truth Social. “With Crime and Illegal Immigration totally out of control, INFLATION Ravaging all Americans, and a World that is laughing at the stupidity of our hapless ‘leaders,’ it is nice to see someone who loves our Country, and wants to save it from DOOM,” Trump wrote. “What a great couple - See you both at the Super Bowl!”
Patrick, for his part, has stayed much quieter on politics. After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, he joined other Black NFL players in calling on the NFL to condemn racism and affirm Black Lives Matter. During that election, he also worked with LeBron James’s More Than a Vote project, aimed at increasing turnout from Black voters. But he didn’t endorse a candidate in 2020, and he told Time magazine he wouldn’t this year either. “I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president,” he said in June. “I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.”
Travis isn’t Republican, though, right?
Probably not? After his Chiefs teammate Harrison Butker made headlines for that ultraconservative college-commencement speech in May, Kelce said he doesn’t agree with “just about any” of Butker’s views. In 2017, he was one of the first white NFL players to join Colin Kaepernick’s racial-justice protests and kneel during the national anthem, and in 2015, he supported “strict gun laws.” But his Instagram likes have gotten controversial, too. Fans caught him liking a post about Trump appearing at a UFC event in April — from right-wing sports journalist Sage Steele, whom he follows. He never addressed the post, but he did previously visit Trump’s White House after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, saying he would go “regardless of who is in office.”
So what does this mean for the election?
To Swifties on the internet, a lot. After years of political silence, Swift only recently began supporting liberal causes and encouraging her fans to vote. She endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and has made her disdain for Trump well-known. (She has yet to endorse Kamala Harris this year, after she definitely did not appear at the DNC last month.) But however openly liberal Swift may be now, she doesn’t seem to be ready to cut off her Trump-loving friends. Hey, maybe this is part of the reputation (Taylor’s Version) heel turn?
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