US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is entering his revenge era: His campaign has rolled out T-shirts that closely resemble the design of pop star Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour merchandise.
The US$45 (S$58) tee features a montage of well-known Trump images and his signature phrase “Make America Great Again”.
It is similar to Swift’s Eras Tour’s T-shirt design, right down to the colour scheme.
The T-shirt – which comes after Swift’s endorsement of Trump’s rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the Nov 5 presidential election – has angered Swift’s fans, popularly known as Swifties, who are urging the megastar to take legal action.
Some of them even tagged her long-time publicist Tree Paine and record label Republic Records on social media.
“Hey, @taylorswift13 Have y’all seen this yet? @realDonaldTrump is COPYING your ‘Eras Tour’ T-Shirt in his likeness! Can you BELIEVE it! There ought to be a LAW against this! ‘CEASE and DESIST’, I think?” said a commenter with the handle dmoore on social media platform X.
“I hope you get sued within an inch of your existence. He’s fixing to be in his unemployed little b***h era,” said a fan with the handle Swiftie Psychic on X.
Another commenter on X, Mr Mike Smith, said: “This screams of desperation.”
Swift, one of America’s most celebrated pop culture icons with a giant following worldwide, said in a Sept 11 Instagram post that she is backing Ms Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them”.
Trump panned Swift for the endorsement.
Swift said she came out publicly in support of Ms Harris partly because Trump in August shared images doctored by artificial intelligence (AI) on his social media site, Truth Social, showing Swift and her fans supporting his presidential campaign.
One of the AI-manipulated photos depicts Swift as Uncle Sam, with the text “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump”. The other photos showed Swift’s fans wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.
Swift said on Instagram: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site... It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
