The right has a new favorite conspiracy circulating on social media in the wake of the Kansas City Chiefs’ win in their conference championship: The Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce relationship is a CIA-backed operation meant to aid President Biden. 

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter Monday. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

A popular user on X with the username “@amuse” said of Ms. Swift, writing: “CIA ASSET?” Others are suggesting that the couple of the moment is actually a creation of the National Football League, and the league somehow made sure Mr. Kelce’s team won a spot in the Superbowl. 

Fox News’ Jesse Watters said on his primetime show that the CIA has a long history of using artists for “propaganda,” and Ms. Swift is just the next chapter in that long history.

“In the 1950s, the government strong-armed Louis Armstrong into doing propaganda across Africa,” he said. “In the seventies, Nixon enlisted Elvis in the war on drugs. … Michael Jackson was tapped by Reagan — using his song ‘Beat It’ to discourage teen drinking.”

“So, is Swift a front for a covert political operation?” he asked. “How’s the psyop going?”

Another popular X user, Ashley St. Clair, said that “South Park needs to make an episode where Taylor Swift is a CIA asset used to swing the election for the geriatric kid sniffer.”

The conspiracy began circulating earlier this month when Mr. Watters hosted his segment that included a retired FBI officer who claimed that because Ms. Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote ahead of the 2024 election, then she must be a tool of the CIA that is tasked with aiding the president’s reelection campaign. 

Ms. Swift remained apolitical for the first several years of her career — until, that is, Senator Blackburn ran for an open Senate seat in Ms. Swift’s native Tennessee. The pop star took to Instagram just days before that election to endorse the Democratic nominee. She later told Time Magazine that Ms. Blackburn’s record “appalls and terrifies” her. 

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Ms. Swift wrote at the time. 

According to the New York Times, Mr. Biden’s aides are, in fact, angling for Ms. Swift’s support in the upcoming election. In 2020, she announced she would vote for the then-former vice president, but never appeared on the campaign trail with him.