Taylor Swift Targeted by Fox News in Bizarre Conspiracy Theory

Fox News has peddled a wild conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift working for the Pentagon as a "psyop."

Jesse Watters aired a clip on the latest episode of his eponymous show that featured a woman supposedly from the Department of Defense talking about recruiting the singer as an "asset" to sway public opinion.

The anchor questioned how Swift got famous and suggested it was because the U.S. government recruited her to be a psyop— an agent used to convey selected information, such as propaganda to influence people's thinking and behavior.

"I like her music," Watters said about Swift during his show on Tuesday. "She's all right, but I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?"

Watters then dropped the bombshell: "Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psyop for combatting online misinformation."

Fox then aired an edited clip of a woman speaking.

"You came in here wanting to understand how you just go out and counter the information operation," she said. "The idea is that social influence can help– can help encourage or promote behavior change... So, potentially as like a peaceful information operation... I include Taylor Swift in here because she's– she's, you know, a fairly influential online person. I don't know if you've heard of her."

After the clip finished, the camera cut to Watters, who then claimed musicians Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were also previous government assets.

"Yeah, that's real. Pentagon's psyop unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset," he said, adding that he worried about Swift being an asset because Swift endorsed President Joe Biden and encouraged her fans to vote in elections.

What Watters failed to tell his viewers, or didn't realize, was that the footage was from a 2019 cyber security conference organized by NATO.

The woman who appeared in the video was Alicia Marie Bargar, who was speaking at the 11th International Conference on Cyber Conflict. Bargar, a data and research engineer was presenting findings of work from John Hopkins University.

They were talking about the idea to use "social network analysis (SNA) to bolster the identification of false narratives used during information operations on social media," according to the conference's program.

Newsweek contacted Fox News by email for comment.

Watters also interviewed former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan about the use of psyops.

"The deployment of a psyop... is still illegal," Kaplan explained, but added it would be in Biden's interest to have someone of Swift's popularity to endorse him.

Watters is no stranger to airing unconventional news content, and went viral in early January when he invited a psychic on air to predict what 2024 had in store for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Paula Roberts, also known as "The English Psychic," appeared on the show, and used a deck of tarot cards to make predictions for the year ahead.

When discussing Trump, Roberts said that she expects: "A sense of loss. A sense of loss, but it's very specific... It's as if he may be thinking more about what he's lost, and not still taking full advantage of what he still has."

Roberts had drawn the Five of Cups card, which is "symbolic of his disappointments and failures," according to Biddy Tarot. The image on the card shows two cards behind the man that represent new opportunities, "but because he is so fixed on his losses"— the overturned cups in front of him— "he misses the opportunities available to him."