Elon Musk Joins Trump to Attack Taylor Swift — She’s Now the Punching Bag of America’s Power Duo

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.

But it didn’t stop there. Following another wave of criticism—this time regarding Musk allegedly doing a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration—he responded, bizarrely, by posting a photo of Adolf Hitler mid-salute next to a photo of Swift with her arm raised during a 2014 concert. She was blowing a kiss. He knew that. Everyone knew that. But Musk, never one to waste an opportunity to blend controversy with digital chaos, threw gasoline on a fire that no one asked for.

What are we left with? Two of the most powerful men in the world, using their platforms—one a social media network, the other the highest political office—to mock and diminish a woman who has done nothing to provoke them beyond exercising her political agency and succeeding beyond their expectations.

Trump calls her "not hot." Musk sends laughing emojis at memes that reduce her to her physical appearance. And yet neither man seems to realize how much smaller they look with every post, every jab, every childish swipe.

This is not political critique. This is not public discourse. This is bullying dressed up as internet banter, performed on the world’s stage by two men who can’t stand that a woman like Taylor Swift is more admired, more listened to, and perhaps most intolerable to them—more influential.

And influence is something both Trump and Musk take very seriously. It’s the currency they’ve used to stay relevant, to command loyalty, and to manipulate narratives. But Swift’s influence operates differently. She doesn’t shout.

She doesn’t need to post late-night rants on niche platforms. Her power lies in the emotional connection she has built with millions of fans, the economic empire she created without cutting deals with the devil, and the grace with which she absorbs attacks and keeps rising.

The internet is watching. And increasingly, it is not amused by this obsessive, derisive behavior. Swift hasn’t replied, and she may never need to. Because her silence screams louder than either man’s keyboard.

While Trump rages from the Oval Office and Musk fumbles with memes in the digital shadows, Swift continues doing what they can’t: winning public favor without humiliation. The billionaire boys club has met its match—and she didn’t even have to log in.