Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, tried to convince pop star Taylor Swift to support her more actively during Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, but it didn’t go as planned, according to a new book.
The upcoming book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, reveals that Swift was seen as a “special challenge” for the campaign. There were rumors that she might perform or appear at Harris’s final rally in Philadelphia, close to Swift’s hometown in Pennsylvania. But she had already turned down the idea.
According to the book, Emhoff, a former entertainment lawyer, was the only person tasked with reaching out to Swift. Harris’s campaign team was told not to contact her team directly. Instead, Emhoff reached out to Swift’s attorney, Doug Baldridge, to see if the pop star would help with the campaign.
Baldridge gave a simple response: “Swift would do what Swift thought was best.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Taylor Swift made a social media post supporting Harris after her debate with Donald Trump, but she did not appear at any campaign events.
The book confirms that despite the campaign’s hopes, “nothing more than the endorsement ever materialized.” Swift chose to stay behind the scenes.
Instead of Swift, the campaign brought in other celebrities to support Harris at the Philadelphia rally, including Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, The Roots, will.i.am, and Fat Joe.
Quick FAQ
Who contacted Taylor Swift on behalf of Kamala Harris?
Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, reached out to Swift’s lawyer.
Did Taylor Swift publicly support Kamala Harris?
Yes, but only through a social media post. She did not appear at rallies or campaign events.
Why was her support considered important?
Because Swift has a huge following, her endorsement could have helped influence younger voters.
Book Blurb
In 2024, award-winning reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf bring us the definitive, inside story of the most tumultuous and consequential presidential campaign in our history.
“A well-paced, thorough and often (darkly) humorous account of the two-year campaign season that began when Donald Trump announced he was running for president again . . . Plenty of thrilling fly-on-the-wall moments.” —The New York Times
“The whole world was against me, and I won,” said Donald Trump in an exclusive interview, ten days before his second inauguration. Nearly four years after Trump’s first turbulent presidency concluded in a violent attempt to overturn the election, he made a political comeback on a scale that stunned the nation. How did the first U.S. president to become a convicted felon regain control of the White House? And at what cost? 2024 is the explosive account of how Trump and his advisers overcame a dozen primary challengers, four indictments, two assassination attempts, and his own past mistakes to defeat the Democrats, and pave the way for a second term that would be far more aggressive and ruthless than the first.
Drawing on extraordinary access to the Trump, Biden, and Harris teams, 2024 takes readers beyond the speeches, rallies, and debates to reveal the innermost workings of the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns. Beginning in August 2022 with the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, and Trump’s subsequent decision to run once again for president, Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf chart how Trump stifled the rise of Republican opponents, including Ron DeSantis, and how his campaign, led by Susie Wiles, landed on a winning strategy. They reveal in unrivaled detail how Joe Biden and his team brushed off concerns about his age, ignored polling numbers, and held off the next generation of eager Democratic hopefuls—even as Biden was dealing with his own special counsel investigation and the trial of his son Hunter. After his disastrous debate performance forced him to withdraw, Biden anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate and tasked her with running the shortest presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. With only 107 days to distinguish herself from the past four years, Harris lacked the time or space to outrun Biden’s shadow—a challenge in and of itself, but one which Biden would make even more difficult. On November 5th, 2024, Trump was elected the nation’s forty-seventh president, and would return to power vindicated, emboldened, unrestrained, and burning for revenge.
Gripping, revelatory, and deeply reported, 2024 is the shocking inside story of the election that tested American democracy and would go on to shape the future of the free world.