The Haunting of Hill House creator said this 2008 Australian mockumentry "chilled me to the bone."

At any given second, millions of people are liking various things on Instagram. Pictures of sunsets and sunrises, recipes for keto brownies, videos of viral K-pop dances — there’s something for everyone. But right now there’s one specific semi-famous woman whose social media activity (liking, unliking, posting) has drawn widespread attention: Brittany Mahomes.  Best known as the wife of Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Brittany Mahomes’s national profile has, for the moment, eclipsed her husband’s. That’s due to her perceived support for former President Donald Trump and his promised political policies. This all started when Mahomes liked and then unliked an Instagram post from the former president that outlined his 2024 platform.   Under any normal circumstances, only Brittany Mahomes’s biggest fans would be deeply invested in whether she desires mass deportation and an Iron Dome missile defense system built over America. But Mahomes has connections to Taylor Swift, the most famous woman in the world. That very valuable association is why the social media likes and dislikes of an American football WAG (that’s “wives and girlfriends”) has become a pop culture saga.  We’re here to answer your most pressing questions. Wait, what happened?  Brittany Mahomes has become a moment in this news cycle because she has been liking and unliking social media posts supporting former President Donald Trump and his various policies.  On August 13, Trump’s Instagram account posted a platform promising to “Seal the border, and stop the migrant invasion,” “Keep men OUT of women’s sports,” and “Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” He also plans to cut “federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, Radical Gender Ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” Eagle-eyed internet sleuths spotted that Mahomes “liked” and “unliked” the xenophobic and transphobic dog whistle salad last week. And though Mahomes doesn’t follow Trump on her account, it seems as though the narrative was already set: Mahomes supports some of Trump’s most pernicious and divisive politics.  The news that people saw Mahomes’s social media activity eventually circled its way back to Mahomes, who was not pleased that people noticed her public actions. To that, she posted a message via Instagram Story (Instagram Stories are temporary), denouncing her haters and telling them they were emotionally damaged adults:  I mean honestly, to be a hater as an adult, you have to have some deep rooted issues you refuse to heal from childhood. There’s no reason your brain is fully developed and you hate to see others doing well.  Mahomes seemed to see the negativity surrounding her social media proclivities as a sign that people were mad that she was succeeding, rather than that people were disappointed in her presumed politics, that is to say, what appeared to be her beliefs about how the country should be run and how others should be treated. Mahomes also liked a pro-Trump comment under a recent post, eliminating any ambiguity that her previous liking and unliking spree might be an accident.  On August 26, Mahomes doubled down and shared a post that read, “Contrary to the tone of the world today … You can disagree with someone, and still love them. You can have differing views, and still be kind.” She did not comment on or explain the relative kindness of the views she appeared to support.  Then, on September 4, Trump apparently heard the news and was flattered, posting a message on his own social media platform, Truth Social. In the post, Trump called Mahomes “beautiful” and thanked her for “strongly defending” him, going on to decry “Crime and Illegal Immigration,” “INFLATION,” a “World that is laughing” at US leaders. Mahomes has yet to comment on Trump’s thanks. During the Chiefs game on September 5, Mahomes and Swift, who sat together during multiple games last year, enjoyed the game from separate suites. But during the US Open men’s tennis final on Sunday, September 8, the pair were seated in the same box (with their significant others) and photographed embracing. And sorry, who is Brittany Mahomes again? Do people regularly care about Brittany Mahomes in general? Brittany Mahomes is primarily famous because she’s married to Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who was her high school sweetheart. She’s also the co-owner of the Kansas City Current, a team in the National Women’s Soccer League, which was the sport she excelled in through college, and she was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model in May of this year. She and Patrick have two children and are currently expecting a third.  The biggest “Brittany Mahomes” search spike of the past year was during the Super Bowl when people were ostensibly trying to figure out whether Patrick Mahomes had a wife and if she was hanging out with Taylor Swift (more on this in a bit).  For the most part, the name Brittany Mahomes is not one the average American gives a lot of thought to, and her political views would probably warrant even less consideration. She’s not a political scholar nor is she some kind of kingmaker. Prior to her online statements about “haters,” the American public wasn’t furiously Googling “Brittany Mahomes loves Trump?” or “Brittany Mahomes Republican.” There’s a bit of a Streisand effect happening, where the more Mahomes doubles down, the more attention she draws to the kerfuffle. There’s possibly a timeline in which Mahomes lets the entire saga run its course and fade away as football season begins.  One thing to note is that her pro-Trump political stance appears to many to be at odds with her husband’s identity. Patrick is biracial, with a Black father and a white mother. And it would seem that Brittany’s liking that pro-Trump post, especially his bits about attacking critical race theory (an attack that would minimize the historical Black American experience) would be insensitive if not incongruent with her husband’s identity. Trump has recently attacked Vice President Kamala Harris’s biracial ethnicity, claiming that she “turned” Black for political gain. Harris’s father is Jamaican.   Patrick hasn’t been open about who he’s voting for, but he has spoken up about police brutality and supported Black Lives Matter. In 2020, he urged the NFL to denounce and separate itself from racism.  But more important than her husband and the reason everyone’s talking about Brittany at all is that she’s allegedly friends with Taylor Swift — the most famous person on the planet.  So this is all because she’s friends with Taylor Swift?  Pretty much!  How long have they been friends?  Swift and Mahomes seem to have formed their close bond after Swift started dating Travis Kelce, a Chiefs tight end who plays with Patrick Mahomes. The two women likely cultivated their relationship during Chiefs games last year, when they were photographed together multiple times at the VIP suites, even potentially wearing matching necklaces. It wasn’t long until they took their friendship on the road, with Taylor including Brittany on a girls’ night in NYC with the rest of her squad.  Wait, what does Taylor have to say about Trump? Swift has spoken up against Trump in the past, acknowledging in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana that she regretted not speaking up about him and his policies during the 2016 election. Ahead of the 2020 election, Swift tweeted that Trump was cavorting with white supremacists and promised “we will vote you out in November.”  But ahead of the upcoming 2024 election, Swift has been less vocal about Trump and publicly more nonpartisan. In March, she urged her fans to vote for “the people who most represent YOU into power.” Kelce, her boyfriend, has appeared in Covid-19 vaccine and Budweiser commercials, two targets of right-wing protests.  At last year’s Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce found themselves in the middle of a kooky right-wing conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden rigged the game in Kelce and Kansas City’s favor, all to get some of that sweet Swift attention. The gist: that Kelce and Swift were liberal, so Biden tilted the game in their favor.  Yet, Trump also recently posted an AI image falsely suggesting he has the support of her fans. Swift has not officially responded to that “acceptance.” Still, Swift has yet to endorse a presidential candidate. In what’s likely to be a close election, some of Swift’s biggest fans are urging her to throw her support behind Harris.  Okay, so … Brittany Mahomes isn’t actually Taylor Swift, she’s just a friend. Why do her perceived politics matter? Mahomes’s social media meltdown came at a peculiar time for megastar Swift. Mahomes and her husband spent the weekend with Taylor Swift at the singer’s Rhode Island estate on August 24. Swift was reportedly hosting a birthday party for pal Blake Lively that weekend. Lively has been having a difficult time in the press recently because of a feud with co-star Justin Baldoni during the filming of their movie It Ends With Us.  Swift’s getaway weekends are famous for being luxurious and over the top, but also as invitations only her very best friends receive. Swift is known for picking and choosing her friends from the world of beautiful and notable people and then visibly hanging out with them. Ever since Swift’s 1989 tour, where her pals — ranging from Fifth Harmony to Gigi Hadid — joined her onstage, Swift’s friendships with the hippest, smartest, kindest, and most beautiful women in pop culture have become a crucial part of her image. All these people who call Swift friends are culturally cool, which makes Swift culturally cool.  At the same time, Swift’s friendships are the most human thing about her. They’re her way of signaling to the public that as different as she is from the rest of the population — a billionaire making hit music and selling all kinds of albums — she’s relatable as a good friend. Arguably, Swift’s friends have defined the singer almost as much as she’s defined herself. The Mahomes’ presence in Rhode Island would indicate that Brittany is indeed a bestie.  Now, not unlike how fans are trying to puzzle out the dynamic of Brittany’s relationship with her husband, Swifties are trying to figure out how Brittany’s politics figure into her friendship with Swift. Since the singer has been relatively quiet, they’re trying to get a read on Swift’s current feelings about Trump. Or, possibly, get a read on how much longer Brittany and Swift will remain friends.  Swift’s friendships have always been a crucial and visible part of her image. And Brittany Mahomes may have just made a mark on that image that Taylor Swift didn’t agree to. Update, September 9, 10:30 am: This story, originally published August 29, has been updated multiple times, most recently with news that Mahomes and Swift sat together at the US Open on September 8.

Today, Vox editor-in-chief and publisher Swati Sharma announced a new cross-platform editorial franchise that will further the brand’s mission of explaining the world. Launching on Wednesday, September 18th as a podcast and newsletter, with a video series to kick off later in the month, Explain It to Me will answer questions from Vox’s audience with deep reporting and expert insight. With new episodes out weekly on Wednesdays, the podcast will be hosted by Jonquilyn Hill, who will serve as a trusted resource to listeners, answering complicated questions about everything from retirement and why there’s so much money in politics to Gen Z’s odds of avoiding an apocalypse and why jars are so hard to open. The newsletter will also publish on a weekly cadence, featuring a rotating cast of journalists from across Vox’s newsroom, answering questions from readers about politics and policy, the economy, culture, science, technology, and more. Explain It to Me launches with Klaviyo as its sponsor across its podcast, newsletter, and video editions.  “Since we first launched ten years ago, we’ve cultivated an audience at Vox that is hungry to learn more about the world around them,” says Vox editor-in-chief and publisher Swati Sharma. “Our audience has never been shy about reaching out to us directly with their questions, and now, with our new Explain It to Me franchise, we’re doubling down on our mission of serving our audience by creating a forum for weekly conversations with them across platforms. On the podcast each week, listeners will get to hang with the lively and thoughtful Jonquilyn Hill on a show that is sure to be appointment listening and in the newsletter, you’ll get to hear directly from a roster of expert voices from across our newsroom.” Drawing on Vox’s strengths as a modern newsroom with text, audio, and video journalism, Explain It to Me is the first editorial product to launch as a multi-platform franchise, and is aimed at deepening Vox’s relationship with its loyal audience by being in direct conversation with them about the questions they care about the most.  “Explain It To Me is a show for the naturally curious,” says Hill. “Our world is full of so many questions and whether they’re big or small, they reveal so much about the world around us and the way it functions. I’m so excited to be a guide for our audience as we go down these fun and informative rabbit holes.” “One of the things Vox prides itself on is our commitment to answering, in an approachable and rigorous way, the questions on people’s minds,” said Elbert Ventura, executive editor of Vox. “The Explain It to Me newsletter is a logical extension of our mission, one that puts our audience’s curiosity and our newsroom’s expertise in closer conversation.”  The trailer for the Explain It to Me podcast is out today and available here, with the first episode to follow on Wednesday, September 18th. It joins a slate of podcasts at Vox that includes the flagship daily news show, Today, Explained, the award-winning science show, Unexplainable, and interview show, The Gray Area. Vox’s podcasts are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, which is a top 10 podcast publisher and home to influential voices like journalist Kara Swisher, entrepreneur Scott Galloway, former Manhattan U.S. attorney Preet Bharara, research professor Brené Brown, Pittsburgh Steelers team captain Cam Heyward, and more. Listeners can submit their questions to the show via the Explain It to Me hotline at 1-800-618-8545. Follow Explain It to Me on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe to the ‘Explain It to Me’ newsletter here, and look out for the first video from the “Explain It to Me” series on Vox’s YouTube channel later this month. About Vox Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it.

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