Former FBI special agent Stuart Kaplan suggested on Fox News Tuesday evening that because pop star Taylor Swift posted a link to register voters, she may be some sort of covert asset.
"In modern times, with these people having such influence and such, you know, immeasurable amount of followers, she can potentially singlehandedly swing voters because of just the amount of followers that she potentially can influence," said Kaplan in discussion with Jesse Watters.
"Yeah, because when she posted the link to the Vote.org, like hundreds of thousands of young Taylor Swift fans all of a sudden registered to vote," said Watters. "I wonder who got to her, from the White House or from wherever. Who makes that initial handshake? Is it the binder?"
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"The administration has what they consider a perception optics management team," said Kaplan. "And those are professionals that go out and identify those people who may be unsuspecting, whether with knowledge or without knowledge, to do these type of campaigns. Now it is quite possible, frankly, that Taylor Swift does not know that she is being utilized in a covert manner to swing voters. But the bottom line is that the Biden administration is savvy, identifying how many followers and how many voters, potentially, she can influence. With either right information or misinformation, she can swing the voters."
Attorney and political commentator Bradley Moss shortly mocked the segment by posting Taylor Swift lyrics. "What if I told you I'm a mastermind? And now you're mine / It was all by dеsign / 'Cause I'm a mastermind" he tweeted.
Former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos also weighed in:
"Fox says Taylor Swift is a covert asset, and i'm now going to sleep soundly," he wrote.
Tracy Walder -- who served in both the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and as Special Agent with the FBI -- said, "Y’all best not be coming for my daughter’s beloved Tay Tay. The only psyop she’s running is bleeding my bank account dry…….."
Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa added that it's "Not just Fox."
"A former FBI agent," she wrote. "Apparently a woman doesn’t have enough agency to encourage people to vote on her own…she has to be a puppet of the government."
Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief David Corn said, "[These] people are bonkers. Taylor Swift, a covert Pentagon asset! And does the CIA have Beyoncé?"
Swift only occasionally wades into direct political discussion, but when she does, she often enrages Republicans. In 2020, she proclaimed that former President Donald Trump was "stoking the fires of white supremacy" and would be voted out.
