Commentary
Warning: One In Three Republicans Won't Believe This Week's Analysis
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, February 16, 2024
This week's presidential campaign news cycle went into overtime beginning with lingering conspiracy theories surrounding Super Bowl LVIII and its Taylor Swift connection. Remarkably, 32% of Republicans responding to a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday said they believed there is a covert government effort for Taylor Swift to help Joe Biden win reelection.
“The supposed Taylor Swift PsyOp conspiracy has legs among a decent number of Trump supporters. Even many who hadn’t heard about it before we polled them accept the idea as credible. Welcome to the 2024 election,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
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While that was among the oddest trending campaign related news stories of the week, the release of the Hur Report's double-edged slam job exonerating Biden as innocent of any crimes in his classified documents probe continued to linger, especially the White House's attempts at spin control.
But the week ended on other legal notes, including:
- Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani Willis' defiant testimony in her own pre-trial hearing preceding what was expected to be her trial of Trump on election interference charges.
- A trial date set for March 25 for Trump's "hush money" civil fraud trial in New York City.
- In a move undercutting House Republican's impeachment hearings, the informant who was the basis of claims about the Biden family's ties to a Ukrainian energy company was charged with lying to the FBI.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
The article linked states:
"Just under 1 in 5 Americans believe the singer Taylor Swift is part of a
covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election...Just under half (46%) of the American public has heard something about Swift being part of a
supposed covert government effort to help Biden win the 2024 presidential election. Just under 1 in 5 Americans (18%) believe such a conspiracy involving Swift exists. Fully 71% of those who believe this identify with or lean toward the Republican Party
How does 71% of 18% of 46% = "32% of Republicans" in your analysis?
Hopefully more than 1 in 3 republicans are smart enought to understand how math works.
The article also states that "many had not heard of the theory until they were polled" but would agree to its plausibility.
And I thought you were the guy fighting misinformation.
@Dan Ciccone: Because you didn't read all of it, therefore you are misinformed.
Check out page 3 of the cross-tabs showing responses by party affiliation:
34. Do you think that a covert
government effort for Taylor Swift
to help Joe Biden win the
presidential election actually
exists, or not?
32% of Republicans responsed "exists."
Juuuuuust want to remind everybody that there is much historical precedent for the intelligence community to use musical artists and movie stars as societal influencers, despite the insistence otherwise from a relentless parade of people who have been wrong about pretty much EVERYTHING the past dozen years.
The late great David McGowan's supremely informative, highly entertaining (and often very funny) WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON: LAUREL CANYON, COVERT OPS & THE DARK HEART OF THE HIPPIE EMPIRE does a great job laying it all out:
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel-ebook/dp/B00JVAW58K
Moreover, after their deaths, it's been revealed that the Israeli actor Topel spied for Mossad; Julia Child was a MI6 asset; Cary Grant was an asset for OSS, the predecessor to CIA. Personally, when I worked for an ad agency in Baltimore, I saw first hand commercials that were made exclusively for the NSA with major movie stars, who also received talking points to disseminate in media in the War On Terror™.
What this poll actually shows is that GOP voters are far more aware of how this country is actually managed and manipulated than the rest of the country.
As for "the Hurd Report's double-edged slam job exonerating Biden as innocent of any crimes in his classified documents," Hurd's reasoning was that poor ol' Joe's basically brain-addled and can't even remember being Veep or what happened with his dead son (much less the live one with those crazy tattoos on his back and the far more wicked stuff on his computer). Yet a few days ago you were decrying "ageism" while insisting that Biden's mentally fine. Cognitive dissonance like that is bad for your mental health, man. Shake it off!
@Joe
.34 states only 18% surveyed have heard of the theory.
Again, math :D
@Dan Ciccone: I'm sorry you're having difficulty reading the cross-tabulation showing the percentage of Republicans who said they believe a covert government operation involving Taylor Swift actually exists, so I added it in its entirety to the bottom of the article.
It explicitly shows that 32% of Republicans responding to the survey believe it exists, not 18%.
If you need me to delineate any other data, please let me know. Otherwise, please stop misstating the findings, because it might misinform other readers.
Thank you.
Thanks for the comments, that really clear up things!