Foreshortened versions of the quote in news headlines were sometimes misleading. Trump's full quote was, "she'll probably pay a price for [endorsing Harris] in the marketplace."
Not long after the Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate ended, pop superstar Taylor Swift posted to Instagram endorsing U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming election. The following morning, former President Donald Trump, Harris' opponent, was asked about the endorsement during a phone interview on the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends."
Trump's answer was brief, and turned up in even briefer form in various headlines about what he said. "Donald Trump Says Taylor Swift Will 'Pay a Price' for Endorsing Kamala Harris," read the headline in People magazine's story. "Donald Trump Thinks Taylor Swift Will 'Pay a Price' for Endorsing Kamala Harris," reported Glamour. Sky News' article was headlined, "Donald Trump says Taylor Swift will 'probably pay a price' for endorsing Kamala Harris after debate."
The quote spread on social media as well as in the mainstream news. One post gained more than 48,000 upvotes on Reddit. Several Snopes readers wrote in asking us to fact-check the claim.
By searching social media for clips of the interview, we found that Trump did say those exact words about Swift. However, versions of his statement that were foreshortened as in the examples above were in some cases misleading. The full quote included necessary, additional context that made it clear Trump was not talking about personal revenge, as some readers may have inferred from headlines.
Snopes transcribed the following quote from the "Fox & Friends" interview (emphasis ours):
"It was just a question of time. [Taylor Swift] couldn't possibly endorse Biden. … But she's a very liberal person. She seems to always endorse a Democrat, and she'll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace."
When placed in this context, the quote reveals that Trump predicted Swift might suffer economically following the endorsement, not that he wanted revenge. Some media outlets did choose to include the full quote in their headlines, avoiding any potential confusion about what Trump meant.
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump previously posted a fake, AI-generated image of Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit, and falsely claimed Swift had endorsed him in the 2024 election. According to Swift's Instagram post, she decided to publicly announce she was voting for Harris because she was worried about potential misinformation following Trump's post on Truth Social.
This is not the first time Snopes has investigated supposed inflammatory quotes from Trump whose meanings changed with context. We previously fact-checked a quote in which Trump said the 2024 election would be a "bloodbath" if he didn't win. There, too, the full context changed how Trump's remarks were interpreted.