How politics became the new entertainment

With Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, Janice Min, cofounder and CEO of The Ankler, provides insight into the powerful intersection of celebrity and politics. Securing a celebrity endorsement is significant, but becoming a star in today’s landscape is an entirely different game. Whether it’s A-list actors, CEOs, or politicians, Min explains how the lines between fame and influence are increasingly blurred, and why it’s impossible to predict when or how someone will rise to stardom.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Bob Safian, a former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

We’ve got to talk about Taylor Swift and her endorsement of Kamala Harris, which sort of set off a media frenzy, and then Trump posts in all caps, ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!’ Can you describe Taylor’s first endorsement post and your reaction? 

Well, for starters, to think that was spontaneously done after the debate, that she spontaneously wrote out that Instagram post is comical, and I also don’t believe for a second that it wasn’t coordinated with the Harris campaign. But whatever, maybe I’m wrong.

But she talked about that after she watched the debate, her decision was made, she was distressed by the fake AI endorsement that had come out where someone had created her endorsing Donald Trump and Donald Trump had posted it on Truth Social, and then, of course, her ultimate trolling signature on the whole Instagram post was signed from “a childless cat lady.” She also didn’t post it on X notably; I have to presume that’s given the Elon Musk environment that has been created, and that Elon Musk has endorsed Trump. So if you thought Kamala Harris won that debate, it made it very extra that night, I guess I would say. 

There’s the impression that Hollywood in the celebrity world is sort of more Democratic, more anti-Trump. Does the media underestimate celebrity support for Republicans for Trump? Or is it really that much of a one-horse town? 

I think it’s a one-horse town with a very quiet hidden pony—people really do fear they will get blacklisted for being overtly supportive of Donald Trump. That contingent absolutely exists here. I mean, Donald Trump comes to Los Angeles and has fundraisers. So I think that the powers that be in Hollywood, the most powerful people in Hollywood, whether it’s Dana Walden at Disney or Ted Sarandos at Netflix—the Democrats are in power, I guess I would say. 

People can’t get jobs or work in Hollywood right now unless you’re at the very, very top, and no one’s gonna put that at risk. Hollywood was very sensitive about issues around racism. I think anyone in Hollywood looking at this stuff going on with the supposed dog- and cat-eating in Springfield, Ohio, it’s like it would be very hard to sell your public support of a candidate like that when you are overseeing an HR department that has invested 10 years in this idea of safe workplaces and all of that. 

There’s just no incentive to come out and publicly support Trump. Obviously, you see who he gets as his supporters like Kid Rock, Scott Baio, Dana White; that he gets wrestlers and certain musicians and a certain sort of on-the-fringe people. And he’s able to sort of build his own celebrity coalition out of that. Jon Voight. But by and large, these are not people who are the bread and butter, A-list of Hollywood.

You also see celebrities who kind of refuse to say who they’re supporting. I mean, I’m thinking of the hubbub around Patrick Mahomes, the Chief’s quarterback. His wife made some posts that people said sounded like she supported Trump, and then he’s declining to comment, so people are saying, “Oh, he doesn’t want to cross his wife.” And I’m just thinking, he doesn’t want to cross his sponsors at State Farm, right? I mean, isn’t that really what it’s about?

Already, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce had become subjects of crazy conspiracies and QAnon and all this nutty stuff in the last NFL season. So I’m very curious to see if there’s a blowback, or how it blows back on him. 

The NFL is very broad. It’s in all states. It doesn’t care if it’s blue or red, and it’s very red meat. And there’s always been that strange conflation of NFL and patriotism that, until Kamala Harris took the stage, patriotism has been owned by the Republicans, you know, factually or not factually, but they’ve made it their message. And well, Kamala Harris has, with some skill, managed to flip that message, and so we’ll see how that plays out. 

Are you hearing anything about the corporate world demanding neutrality from spokespeople more than they used to? I’m thinking about how Caitlin Clark liked Taylor Swift’s endorsement but then declined to say anything about her position. I just keep thinking, is that all about the corporate world? Or are they really just wanting to stay private? 

Both. I mean, I think that the incentives to come out and state your political position are so small now. What do you gain? Are you so impassioned that you have to say something? Fine. That’s fine. But I think the risks are being made clear to both, you know, whether you’re a CEO or whether you’re a star. And I think there are very few people who are willing to take that risk these days. How many stars can withstand a message from Trump on Truth Social, like saying, ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!’, capital letters, exclamation points? No, like, very few stars can psychically handle that or would feel that their business could handle that.

Being a star is like being an elected official in your own right; like, you’re trying to stay in office as long as possible. And I have to presume that for a lot of them, taking a political stance doesn’t help that.

As you know, the political coverage intensifies as we move close to the election. We’ve asked ourselves on this show, like, how much do we lean into that obsession in our coverage versus kind of counter programming, going the other way. And I’m curious if there’s a playbook that works for media companies. Because leaning in can help ratings at least in some ways, but then sometimes, there are things you have to do hyperbolically to maximize that attention.

I always feel like, fish where the fish are. People are obsessed with it. And I think that in the way that in 2015, when Trump was running for president, politics became the new entertainment. I would say this summer, when you have George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s movie on Apple TV being taken out of theaters and sent directly to streaming, like we have a new star system this summer and to lean into it.

And it just speaks to the point that you can’t fabricate stardom in the way that it was maddening for some people to see Trump capture the imagination in 2015, 2016, that you’re seeing that with Kamala Harris, too. That’s something you can’t fabricate. And I think the problem that we were seeing with Biden is that he did not have star power. He didn’t have star power in 1976, and he did not have star power in 2024.

Well, we were unsure that Kamala Harris had star power four years ago, but she does now.

It’s so crazy. I think some of it is, like, how do you meet the moment, right? So I’ll use some Hollywood analogies here since I’m your Hollywood person today. So, like, let’s talk about the actor Glen Powell, who was sort of a solid working actor. You didn’t know his name. And then suddenly, he became the biggest thing in the world in his thirties. And that’s very unusual. 

And so that’s someone just hitting for some reason at a certain time. Well, this is the thing that makes people in L.A. also lose their minds, right? Like, you see these people become famous and you’re like, but why? How did that happen? And I would say the same goes for television shows, for movies. Like, why that and not this? And it’s one of the last unexplainable things in a world that’s trying to game the system with algorithms and recommendations, and to have an intangible left in the world is sort of fun and sort of crazy-making. 

Did you ever think that a politician from California, from San Francisco, a woman of color capturing the nation’s imagination and having a horse race in swing states? That to me is again, sort of the thing that makes politics or Hollywood so engaging. You just don’t know where the star is going to come from. You cannot make this up. I cannot wait to see how history looks back on 2024.