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Well, I am sure this will be a surprise to absolutely no one, but people online are using Taylor Swift's wedding as political fodder. And both sides are angry at her for different things, different transgressions over the last weekend, these huge nuptials that she and Travis Kelsey hosted in New York City. But actually it's all just different sides of the same coin. And maybe there could even be a moment of unity against the New York City government. So on Friday night, in case you missed it, which I think some people probably did, cause I was asking Alex about it, I was like, so what did you see on your algorithm about this wedding? He was like, honestly, literally nothing at all. He saw like a couple of NFL people going, cause obviously that's his X algorithm. And that was all. So if you are like Alex and you did not know. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married on Friday night, July 3, in a glamorous, huge affair at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There were apparently around 1,000 attendees at the wedding, over 100 at the rehearsal dinner the night before. They built a castle and a garden inside the arena. Stevie nicks and Paul McCartney, I think performed. And Adam Sandler of all people officiated the ceremony. They each gave 20 minute vows, I think, which is remarkable. I don't know how I would have felt sitting there watching that. But you know, it's Taylor Swift, she's a writer. Travis Kelsey had to step it up, think of 20 minutes worth of things to say and you know, everything has been very hush hush, which is what she wanted. I think that she will roll out everything on her own time. People had to sign NDAs, I believe, before they even got the invitation. So everything that people have said really has just been. It was a beautiful affair. It felt so intimate, but also it was this huge, grand thing. We love this part, whatever. It was very, very minimal. Like very small things are being dropped, which I think is intentional. Now I don't think, and this has obviously been a big conversation online, but I do not think that Madison Square Garden of all places would be most people's preferred wedding venue. And most people because of that, were convinced that this was some decoy, that they were putting all of their attention on this, staging things outside. But really they were getting married in some other secret location, trying to distract everybody. But when it became clear that no, it was actually happening this weekend at Madison Square Garden, people got very angry for a myriad of different reasons. And they were very judgmental. The words tacky and classless were thrown around could not believe that she would do this. People were saying, you know, look at this billionaire wanting to get married at Madison Square Garden. All of the things. And honestly, in thinking about getting married at a, you know, basketball stadium, honestly, Taylor Swift probably felt the same way, because apparently she originally wanted to get married in Rhode Island. That is where she has this big, huge, like, gilded age house. Maybe it's not Gilded Age. I don't know. It's this huge mansion on the coast. She loves Rhode Island. I think that she spends most of her time there when she's vacationing, not in Kansas City and not in New York City. There was even a story drifting around that she bought out an entire other wedding that was taking place in Newport, Rhode island, in June at one of the big, you know, famous hotels or gilded age mansions. And she was like, I'm going to pay for your entire wedding. Cancel it. I will pay for you to go get married anywhere else, but I'm going to book this weekend. But then, apparently, security became such a big issue that they had to find somewhere else. Somewhere where drones and helicopters would not be circling the grounds like they did at Selena Gomez's wedding. Somewhere where people would not be standing on the beach below her house looking up in the windows. A place with easily guarded access points. And now, personally, if I was thinking of places like this, I probably would have thought of the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also Madison Square Garden. Makes sense. Unfortunately, it makes sense for somebody of her fame level, the sheer amount of people that she wanted to invite. She's always been very open. She wanted this, like, huge wedding she was on. What is that guy's name in Britain? Graham. Anyway, one of those, like, celebrity interviewers. And she was like, if I've met you, you're invited. I've always dreamed of having this big wedding. I want to have a huge party. Like, there's always been what she wanted. So she needed a place that was big enough and secure enough. And I am sure that they made it look lovely inside. Like, there is a lot you can do to a place when budget is not even in your vocabulary. Now, in terms of the actual wedding, celebrities flooded the city, as did her fans from all over the world. They were surrounding the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of her and Travis, obviously. And people have thrown this around in the last year that they have been engaged. But, like, this truly was the American equivalent to a royal wedding, possibly even bigger, because she's not just an American icon. Like, she obviously is a global icon. And with Anything that is as big as a royal wedding or even bigger, there is obviously going to be a lot of controversy. And like I said, there were a lot of people who were very angry specifically because she brought this chaos, her chaos and all of her fans to New York City. Just look at some of these posts, one man said. I want people to really process what Taylor Swift is doing here. She has the means to get married anywhere in the world, but chooses something that inconveniences millions because she doesn't see us as real people. Her music has never been good enough for your worship, even either, another person said. Thanks so much for ruining nyc, Taylor. You are both narcissistic, egotistical, empty vessels. Nobody cares about you except those empty headed cultist Swifties. The holiday weekend isn't about you no matter how much you try to make it. So that's a lot of anger. I understand feeling inconvenience because there is a big event in your city and I'm sure that it was inconvenient. But how many other inconvenient events take place in New York City on a monthly basis? From, you know, Knicks games to parades to huge events in Times Square to huge stadium tours that come through, I feel like every other week there's probably something that is inconveniencing New Yorkers. Not to mention all the scaffolding and everything they're building. Like I feel like maybe it's just the city that you choose to live in. Like the city is always chaos. Let's calm down. But guys, that is just the tip of the iceberg with the things that people were angry about. So getting into the politics of it all, because everything in 2026 obviously becomes about politics. There are two that happened at this wedding or surrounding this wedding that people are really pressed about, and that is immigration and taxes. Then it's ironic because those were two of the biggest ticket items in the 2024 election. Obviously people are still thinking about these things because now for some reason, Taylor Swift's wedding has even been thrown right into the middle of all of these hot button debates and issues. So the right, the political right, is angry because Taylor Swift obviously is a Democrat, meaning that she is still seemingly by deduction, you are assuming that she is lax on illegal immigration, probably does not like what ICE is doing, and yet she has constant armed security around her and she literally built walls and shut down streets around Madison Square Garden to keep people out. And so people on the right see that as very hypocritical. Like one person said Taylor Swift, who doesn't support borders, walls, guns, or billionaires, sets up a massive wall around Madison Square Garden with heavily armed security for her billionaire wedding. Another person said Taylor Swift's wedding in New York. The singer demanded barricades and extraordinary security for the event. On the other hand, she doesn't want the anti immigration wall at the border to protect her country.
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Hmm.
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And Wokeness said Taylor Swift now believes in walls, guns and police. Oh, and straight marriage. Welcome to the far right. And that last tweet is just the best. Like, she now believes in straight marriage. Like, I get the conversation about immigration and police. We can reach for that. But her now suddenly believing in straight marriage is not even something that is reachable. It is just dumb. Like, what are you even talking about? I would say that over of her songs that she's been writing over the last 15 to 20 years are about her pining for love, wanting to find somebody to spend her life with, somebody who's gonna kneel to the ground and pull out a rain. All like, literally the majority of her songs. And what is so ridiculous is that this was a conversation that my mom and I had all the time. Like, my mom would say, you know, she's writing a lot of songs about boys. Life is not all just about boys. It is about things that are bigger than that. Like growing up in the feminist girl boss era of the early 2000s, people would shame Taylor Swift because of how much she spoke about boys and boyfriends and loves. And you're saying that she's never done that? Like, two things can't be true at once, people. You just want to be angry at her for political brownie points. Anyway, I get that the world is insane. We are dealing with a lot of deranged, crazy people on the other side of the aisle. We have musical artists that are having lesbian eras and then they are having to come out to the world and their fans as bisexual or straight once they find a man to settle down with. But that is not Taylor Swift. I mean, it has never been her. Regardless of what the political right says, Taylor Swift is not some crazy, deranged far left. They them chopping off her boobs, anything like that. Like, she is a very normal millennial white woman who cried over Trump, like most millennial white women who are also Democrats. Like, she is as average as they come for her age and her demographic and her industry. And while people online are trying to dunk on her for having private security and the walls, the barricades, like, she has, I checked, she has never spoken about ICE or anything like that. Like most of her political talking points have been very vague and lukewarm statements on gay rights and racism and having empathy. Like in her documentary Ms. Americana. She was just crying over like I want people to have rights. It was all very boring and very milquetoast predictable. In fact, a lot of her major fans wish that she would take it way further than she does. She gets in trouble with them because she's not far left enough. For example, this was a huge story. Leading up to their wedding, Taylor and Travis gave away a whopping two $26 million to different charities. They gave away money to different organizations in all of the cities that are important to them.
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So they gave a ton of money to organizations in New York City. They did, you know, some in Nashville, some in Reading, Pennsylvania, which is where she grew up. They did them in Kansas City and Travis's hometown in Ohio. $26 million. That should be incredible. That's great. That is a lovely gift to these organizations in these communities. But some people online were very unhappy with where the money was going. Or maybe I should say where the money was not going. Like for example, one of these tweets. One person said nothing. For immigrant defense, LGBT people, racial minorities, they picked the safest possible charities. And there were many comments like that one. That same chronically online anger only increased when people spotted an Untouchable on the guest list. Now, ironically, and this takes us to the other side of the political aisle. The Left is also pissed about something regarding immigration, but it is because a man whose Fortune 500 company has a contract running an ICE detention facility was spotted leaving the wedding. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. She's a fake activist. She hates us. She supports ice. All of the things that you can imagine. Those posts have been running amok. One person said. Yes, Taylor Swift invited Steve Demetrio to her wedding at Madison Square Garden. And yes, he runs an ICE detention facility in Fort Bliss, Texas. Steve got the $453 million contract from the Trump administration in March. Billionaire's gonna billionaire. Now. In addition to Steve, apparently his son Stephen Jr. Who is a Republican representative from Ohio, was also in attendance. Oh no. Again, cue the pianos. Dun dun dun dun dun. The left being very angry on Reddit. All I can say is I am just waiting for the right to pick up this story because I'm sure that the same accounts posting about ICE would 100% flip if they knew this fact and start saying based Taylor Swift rubs shoulders with Republican at her wedding. Based Taylor Swift endorses ICE simply because this man was there. When in actuality neither of these sides would be correct. Because I think most common sense people that are not chronically online know that this is not news. Just like they know that Good Ranchers is the best. By the way, did you guys know that July is National Grilling Month? So whether you are making burgers on a Tuesday, steak for the weekends, or hosting a big backyard barbecue with friends, Good Ranchers has your meals covered all summer long. Good Ranchers partners with local farmers and ranchers all around the country to deliver 100% American meat straight to your door. It is pasture raised, has no antibiotics, no added hormones. It is the kind of quality that you can actually feel good about serving to the people around your table. Now we just had a huge fourth of July party. It was so much fun and I'm not kidding. I think that Alex grilled over 35 good ranchers Wagyu patties and let me tell you, people were raving about them so you need to get in on that. Plus they were so easy to use, we just defrosted all of them in the sink, threw them on the grill. It was so simple and a great party hack. Now Speaking of the 4th this July, Good Ranchers is celebrating all 50 states all month long with $50 off your first order. Just go to goodranchers.com and use my code Brett at checkout to get 50% off anything on their site. Remember, that is code Brett for $50 off. But you can also get free meat with every order on top of the $50 off. If you decide to start a subscription plan today because this summer is one to savor. 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Head on over to cozyearth.com and use my code BRETT for an exclusive 20% off. That is code BRETT for an exclusive 20 percent off site wide. And if you see a post purchase survey mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the Brett Cooper Show. All right, now back to this not being news at all. Let's just like take a look at Taylor Swift's life. Like her dad, at least historically has been a Republican. That was the whole argument in her Miss Americana documentary. You know her dad was a Republican, she was not. They were fighting. She, some of she and Travis's best friends are Republicans. That's the Mahomes family, Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany. And obviously we talked about this a couple of years ago, but the mob tried to go after Brittany Mahomes after she liked a Trump post and then she kind of pushed back. They were still at the wedding. She and Patrick are still friends with Taylor and Travis. They are also close with the Hunt family who owns the Kansas City Chiefs. That is a family that is very open about their Christian faith, about their right leaning conservative values. They routinely go to Trump events to turning point events and they were also at the wedding. They had not been been shunned. But people have not caught on to those stories or those guests yet. They are mainly focused on Steve with the ICE detention facility and they are angry. Like one person said, this is genuinely so disgusting and evil I don't know any more about Taylor. I can't recognize that woman and I'm really sorry. But I truly can't keep like supporting her or anything because why? I don't understand why another person commented saying we aren't talking enough about how Taylor Swift invited Steven J. Demetrio to her wedding. The fact that she can get away with having a contractor for the largest ice facility in the US as one of her guests is insane. Here is the real story. It's not like Taylor is best friends with this man, is, you know, spending Friday evenings at the ice detention facility, anything like that. The real story is that Stephen Sr. Is the adopted father of Travis's childhood best friend and former teammate Reggie King, which you can see here in photos. This is him and his wife leaving the rehearsal dinner. That is him and Taylor at a game. And the entire Demetrio family was invited. They have been friends for decades upon decades. The brother of Reggie was also invited. Like that is just how it works when you're Taylor Swift and you are on record saying anybody that we've ever met, that we love, we are going to invite you. That's how it works when you have a 1,000 person wedding. Like this was not her making any kind of political statement. This is just what a normal person does when they get married. You invite people who you care about, who have been in your life for a long time, who have been integral in your development as a human being or your development, you know, as a couple. You invite people who maybe don't agree with you on every single political issue. Crazy idea. I know for the angry chronically online. But most normal people are still able to get along or at least put things aside for one night to celebrate love because of somebody that they care about. I know crazy idea and stories like this and episodes like this. It really makes me do some self reflection, I think because I feel like I spent a good amount of time in that very angry ecosystem where every single little thing was fodder for political debate and projection. And while I do think that most things in the world are inherently political, I agree with that. Because politics really is about values and culture more than anything else. Even though I do believe that and I look at things through a political lens, not everything has to be so black and white. Not everything needs to be some kind of political shot at the other side. Like two things can be true at once. Taylor Swift can be a Democrat, probably disagree with me on most things, and yet she can also still have security. I would like her to have security. I would like her to fly on her private jets. I do not want to have to deal with being in an airport where Taylor Swift is flying. Good for you. Barricade it. That makes a lot of sense. You can be a Democrat and do that. Now. On the flip side, Taylor Swift can also still be a Democrat and be friends with Republicans or at the very least rub shoulders with them politely because they are old friends. Maybe just take it down a notch. Maybe it does not have to be so extreme 24 7. Now, this whole right versus left debacle aside, I do want to talk about the one good thing, because there was one point that did have almost everybody on the Internet united, so we can at least thank Taylor Swift for giving us that. But the issue that was uniting everybody was the fact that taxpayers in New York City should not have to carry the alleged $160,000 financial burden of her wedding. Meaning the street closures, the subway station closures, the New York City Police Department overtime presence, things like that. That allegedly is at least $160,000 and you have everyone from Hasan Piker to Republican representatives in New York City calling her out for that. Commenters all over the Internet have been jumping in. Like one person said, are the event organizers paying for the extra police time or is the already failed socialist mayor throwing that on the taxpayers too? Another even angrier person said, screw them. I am literally sitting in the dark while they waste my tax dollars. F you Taylor Fu Travis. F the mayor for putting his people at risk to allow bitch and her man to take over my city while the actual taxpayers suffer and sit in darkness due to his call. So obviously there is a lot of anger here. I just read you those two comments. They were the comments at the beginning where people were saying, why are you coming into my city? You're causing all of this dysfunction. It's such a big inconvenience. Obviously people are very upset about this happening in New York. Now if you live on the eastern side of the United States, I'm sure you experienced this. But last week there was a major heat wave and it caused a ton of stress on New York City's already very vulnerable power grid. Mamdani told people to set their thermostats to 78% degrees for the greater good. That was happening. And then here was Taylor and Travis and a million friends at Madison Square Garden and obviously they had power. And obviously at MSG the thermostat was not set to 78 degrees. Plus there were all of her fans, there were all the celebrities attending it was not just Madison Square Garden security and the off duty policemen that they or the event coordinators that are renting out MSG often hire to manage the crowds around the events. There were also additional street closures and extra policemen working overtime as directed by the city. Those were not things that MSG and Taylor and her team put. The city came in and said, because this is going to be so big, we have to shut down the area around msg. And that was the part that was estimated to be at least 160k. I've even seen things that say it's up to a million dollars, but 160k at least. But here's the part, and this might be controversial, but here is the part where I think everybody just needs to take a chill pill and sit back and think about it. Now, obviously everybody, right or left, cares about where our tax dollars go. And Taylor Swift's wedding is now the sacrificial lamb in this debate. But I'm sorry, $160,000. I know this sounds insane to say, but that is a drop in the bucket for New York City. Like the New York City Comptroller came out and said, yeah, I know everybody is arguing about this, but we won't even see these numbers until November. We don't know what we're dealing with. And we don't even itemize them. We don't itemize them by events. Because in New York City, for things like this event, it all goes into, in terms of their accounting, it goes into one big events bucket. Private events like this wedding or the Met Gala, public events like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, unexpected events like for after the Knicks won and all those people, like, took over the city, all of it goes into one big bucket. And for 2026, the New York City Comptroller is estimating that spending for that big bucket to be around $890 million. So Taylor is allegedly costing them 160,000. But for all the other events, they are spending close to $900 million. And again, the city government does not organize this line by line per event. So maybe while everybody is obviously complaining about, you know, this being on the backs of taxpayers, maybe the bigger story should be that New York City residents don't actually know where the money is going. And just to make things worse, the comptroller's office itself said that even though every quarter they are required to report and publish all of the overtime NYPD spending so that New York City residents can see what their tax dollars are being spent on even though that is the case quote in practice, the office said those reports are often late, late, incomplete or inconsistently posted online, making it hard to track spending in real time. Inaccurate, late, inconsistent. I mean that is just classic government. You are supposed to have transparency as an American, but you cannot even get them to give you a line by line analysis on how they are spending close to $900 million. And guess what guys? That is not Taylor Swift's fault. I'm so sorry that she cannot be your sacrificial lamb, but it's not her fault nor is she even close to being this quarter's this quarter's biggest expense. And if she could have changed the weather so that she would not be getting married in a heat wave while the grid was vulnerable, I am sure that she would prefer that not just for the city, but also for her experience and her guest experience. But oh my gosh, she can't control the weather. She's a billionaire but she can't control the weather. Omg. I know. So crazy. But that is just a fact. And honestly, I know people are really making this about New York City, that she's adding chaos to one of the biggest cities in the world. She's throwing a wrench in people's weekend plans, their workday commutes, whatever it is, is. I'm sorry. This would have been an issue even if she was getting married outside of nyc. It would have been an issue no matter where she got married because of how famous she was. Because if she were to, for example, get married at her Rhode island house as was her original plan, people in Rhode island would be complaining that the small Rhode island police force was stretched thin, that she ruined a vacation weekend for all of the tourists trying to come to Newport, that she was interrupting everybody's family time, that she was disrupting the economy. Whatever it was. The same thing would have happened in Nashville if she went abroad. If she did an Italian wedding like Dua Lipa just did last place month, people would shame her for shutting down an entire Italian city like they did to do it just a couple of weeks ago. Dua Lipa had this huge wedding very similar to Taylor's. Obvious. I don't know if it was that big, but she literally shut down a small Italian city. Nobody could come in and out. People were furious. Now imagine that at a Taylor Swift level of fame. Like she was never going to win and make people happy unless she did a very tiny, secret small elopement like Tom Holland or Zendaya did. But she has also Been very clear from the start that she wanted a big wedding. And she has all of the money and the resources in the world to make that happen and to make it happen safely for her, her family, her friends, all the guests and the crazy fans that she knew were going to be traveling from around the world just to try to stand outside the barricades, capture the leftover food that the catering was throwing out the window, just to catch a glimpse of her or of the guests. You know, she's not delusional. She knew that that was going to happen. So she simply had to find the best way to keep everybody safe. Safe without being too disruptive. And honestly, I think it's better that she picked a city like New York City where, as I was arguing at the top of this video, I feel like it's inconvenienced by a big event every other week. And honestly, to the Internet at this point, complaining about somebody, especially her money and influence, it is stale. It is such a boring thing to be angry about. It is old news. Who cares? Like, rich people are going to rich. They're going to throw insane parties that inconvenience normal people. They are going to do insane things that we can't even dream about. That is a tale as old as time that has been going on since the era of the Greek and the Romans. People want to flaunt their wealth. They want to throw huge parties. And guess what? It's okay. To the chronically online detractors, I want to tell you that you do have the option to just observe what is going on and go, okay, cool. And move on with your day. Pick some rocks, touch some grass, log off. You will be okay. Actually, you will be better than okay. From experience, I can tell you you will be happier than ever.
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