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Smashed Taylor Swift-themed guitar returns to auction

A North Texas man paid $3,250 for a Taylor Swift-themed guitar only to smash it with a hammer at a charity auction.
In a now-viral clip, a white-haired man grabs the guitar and repeatedly hits it with a hammer as the crowd cheers and an auction host laughs on stage. The man appears ready to smash it into the ground before the auction’s host stops him.
“I guess we don’t need the wall hanger,” the host jokes.
At least one person is heard shouting “No,” before the unidentified man begins smashing the guitar, which was covered in photos of Swift, including one signed by the pop star.
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The video was shot Saturday at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, about 30 miles south of Dallas.
“Out of context, it may have seemed mean or malicious,” Craig Meier, the auction’s host and a spokesman for Ellis County Wild Game, told The Dallas Morning News Friday. “He was kind of goaded. People were saying [he] should smash it. … He got up and put on a show. Nobody ever meant for it to really get out of the room.”
Online commentators have made the video a “political thing,” Meier said. “People are growing weary of entertainers using their influence in the political world. I think it was just a jab at it.”
On Tuesday, the guitar returned to auction, this time on eBay. The man who destroyed the instrument donated it to game dinner organizers, who are again selling the guitar, according to the item’s sale description. As of Friday afternoon, the top bid was $7,600. Proceeds will go to agricultural educational programs for children.
“We’re just a little local charity,” Meier said. “At the end of the day, we just want to help kids.”
Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in September. The star included a picture of herself holding her cat Benjamin Button, and she signed the message “Childless Cat Lady,” a reference to three-year-old comments made by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, about women without children not having an equal stake in the country’s future.
After her endorsement, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Since it was posted, the video of the man smashing the guitar has spread across social media and on news sites, including TMZ and music news outlets.
Rob Bartley, who attended the event, told The Independent the man announced his intention to smash the guitar, and people reached for their cell phone cameras.
“It was unexpected, but not surprising,” Bartley said. “This part of Texas leans heavily conservative and the Biden-Harris administration isn’t held in high regard.”
According to Guitar World, the instrument was likely a display model created purely for novelty as opposed to playing, so the stunt “has likely not deprived us of a good old patriotic US build — or a guitar of the type actually used by Swift.”
The game dinner and auction were raising money for Future Farmers of America. In addition to the guitar, the auction included George Strait tickets in Las Vegas, a black bear hunting trip in Canada, an all-inclusive vacation in Mexico and a dove hunt in Argentina.

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