Combination showing Taylor Swift (L) and Ray Dalio.
Getty Images (L) | CNBC (R)
Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio attended a Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert in Singapore, and posted a selfie from the packed venue along with a caption explaining why he thought the megastar should be the next president of the United States.
″@TaylorSwift for President!” the Bridgewater Associates founder Dalio wrote Thursday on Instagram.
“I just saw her at her concert in Singapore and realized that she can bring together Americans and people in most countries much better than either of the candidates, and that bringing people together is the most important thing,” Dalio wrote.
“Watching this concert with people from all over the world made me and them feel good and connected and reminded me how powerful that universal culture is,” he added. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had two candidates who could lead that culture and make smart leadership decisions too?”
While the post was likely made in jest, politicians and pundits know all too well of the record-breaking Grammy award winning singer’s powerful influence and enormous fan base.
Taylor Swift performs in Cincinnati, Ohio, June 30, 2023, during her Eras tour.
Dalio later tweeted an update, elaborating on his frame of mind when he made the first post, and explaining it.
“Re: my Taylor Swift for president! comments, no I wasn’t drunk (though obviously I need to work on my selfies) and yes it was a joke, which is a half-truth,” Dalio wrote in the post on the social media site X.
“The half that’s true is that I think she can bring people together a lot better than either of the presidential candidates and bringing people together is one of the most important things a president should do.”
Swift’s get-out-the-vote efforts have previously spurred tens of thousands of young people to register to vote in a single day.
And the reputation she gained supporting Joe Biden’s campaign against former President Donald Trump that year have fostered right-wing conspiracy theories that she’s being deployed as a tool of the Democrats or even the Pentagon and CIA for this year’s presidential race.
While some Republican lawmakers and television pundits suggest Swift is part of a masterminded plot to achieve the Biden administration’s endgame, her fans have replied with “you need to calm down.” Swift has not made any endorsements for the 2024 election, but encouraged her 283 million Instagram followers to vote in a post on Tuesday for the Super Tuesday primaries.
Dalio, who turned Bridgewater into the world’s largest hedge fund, has previously stressed what he believes is the need for a more centrist approach to American politics. Many voters have not expressed happiness at the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch, bracing for a potentially cruel summer and fall campaign season as the contenders’ bad blood risks stoking further polarization in the country’s politics.
“What we need is a very strong middle,” Dalio said at a financial forum in November.
“We have irreconcilable differences by sides that will not accept losing.”
He said at the time that he saw former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, as the most promising candidate. Perhaps he now hopes Swift will fill in the blank space left by Haley’s recent departure from the race.
Taylor Swift performs onstage during night one of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Nissan Stadium on May 05, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.
John Shearer/tas23 | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
The Eras Tour is the most profit-generating concert tour in history, spanning 152 shows in five continents over 21 months.
Since launching her tour, Swift has become a billionaire and boosted the economies of numerous cities and states, surpassing many forecasters’ wildest dreams. The U.S. Federal Reserve in 2023 cited her concerts as providing significant economic boosts to American cities, and some analysts estimated that by October of that year, the shows and subsequent gold rush of travel and spending by fans had added $5.7 billion to the U.S. economy.
In Singapore alone, six consecutive days of concerts are estimated to have added between $225 million to $300 million to the city-state’s economy in the first quarter of this year, according to a survey of economists published by Bloomberg.
