Taylor Swift is engaged. MAGA hopes she inspires a marriage revival.Charlie Riedel/AP
You could say that Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce’s engagement, announced Tuesday in an Instagram post that has 17 million likes and counting, broke the internet. And right-wingers immediately started talking rings and talking cradles.
News outlets sent push alerts. Celebrities and politicians sent their congratulations. “Taylor Swift engaged” was the number one trending search topic on Google, with more than two million searches by early afternoon.
The news also ricocheted around right-wing corners of the internet, where leading conservatives said they hoped Swift’s engagement would help achieve some of their top goals, now backed by the Trump-administration: Inspire a nationwide boost in (heterosexual) marriage and birth rates.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the right-wing Daily Wire news site, called Swift and Kelce’s engagement “unironically an excellent thing” in post on X to his nearly eight million followers. “I hope many other single people follow their example,” he added. Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, said he hopes Swift and Kelce “have lots of kids and end up very happy!” in a post to his five million followers. On his podcast Tuesday, Kirk said he hoped that marriage might make Swift more conservative: “Taylor Swift might go from a cat lady to a JD Vance supporter, and we should celebrate that…she should have more children than she has houses.” Later in the episode, he implored her to “reject feminism,” adding, “submit to your husband Taylor, you’re not in charge!”
Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, wrote to her more than 92,000 X followers that she hopes Swift’s engagement “inspires young women to see the joy and purpose in getting married, starting a family, and committing to one person for the rest of their lives.”
A bit later, Hawkins followed up with another take, claiming, “America is heading into its “get married & have babies” era.” Lila Rose, a fellow leading anti-abortion activist and founder of the group Live Action, told her more than 394,000 X followers: “Marriage is the best and tons of women look up to Taylor. So happy to see her embracing it.” Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, said to “expect a spike in marriage” following the news.
That MAGA would rush to claim this news as a win is not surprising when you consider how hard they have been pushing for more marriage and babies in the second Trump…era (see what I did there?). The Trump administration—and particularly Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk—are obsessed with boosting the declining birth rate, as my colleague Kiera Butler has chronicled. (The president’s promise to make IVF more widely available as part of this, on the other hand, has pretty much gone nowhere.)
In the Christian nationalist worldview that shapes many of these right-wing thought leaders, marriage is, of course, a necessary precursor to procreation. A new generation of so-called trad (short for “traditional”) wives are thriving online, extolling the virtues of marriage and motherhood and calling for a return to more traditional gender roles. And federal officials have also signaled their desires to boost marriage rates: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is married with nine kids of his own, signed a memo in February recommending that his department prioritize “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” Vance has also decried the decline in marriage among young people in a May interview with the New York Times.
But, seriously, do the right-wingers who hope Swift will inspire a new army of trad wives know anything about the pop superstar? Even I, an avowed non-Swiftie, know all too well that Swift does not aspire to the MAGA model of marriage and motherhood that they’re hoping for.
First, Swift endorsed then-Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over President Donald Trump in the election, in an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with a cat—an obvious dig at Vance’s derision of so-called “childless cat ladies.” Secondly, while Swift has talked about wanting marriage and children, she has also spoken out against the expectation for women to make those commitments once they turn 30. And perhaps most significantly, Swift has sung at length about resisting the double standards and traditional pressures women face.
I mean…have they ever listened to “Lavender Haze“?
All they keep askin’ me (all they keep askin’ me)Is if I’m gonna be your brideThe only kind of girl they see (only kind of girl they see)Is a one-night or a wife
[…]
Surreal, I’m damned if I do give a damn what people sayNo deal, the 1950s shit they want from me
Or “Bejeweled“?
They ask, “Do you have a man?”I can still say, “I don’t remember”
As Sam Van Pykeren, one of Mother Jones‘ resident Swifties, pointed out, the right-wing discourse around this proves that even Swift—one of the most famous and wealthiest women in the world—can’t escape MAGA logic: Women only achieve their full value when they’re wifed up.
Ruth Murai, Anna Yeo, and Sam Van Pykeren contributed reporting.
