The viral moment happened Saturday night at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie.
There were more splinters than teardrops left on a Taylor Swift-autographed guitar after a Texas man smashed it apart as “a joke” — after he paid thousands for it at auction, the man said Tuesday.
Gary Estes, 67, says he paid $4,000 for the instrument at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, an annual charity event that benefits agricultural-based education efforts for local youths.
When he went to get the guitar, Estes took a hammer to it in a moment captured on video that has gone viral — but he insisted he has no will against Swift.
“There was nothing malicious or anything about it,” Estes told NBC News on Tuesday. “It was just a joke at an auction that we had to raise money for kids, right? And that’s all it was. There was nothing mean about it, nothing bad about it. It was just a joke that they were making up on the stage, and we just followed through with a joke.”
@jdcobb58 Man pays $3200.00 dollars for autographed Taylor Swift Guitar then smashes it to pieces with a hammer. #taylorswift
Auctioneer Craig Meier, a spokesperson for the event, said the guitar-smashing played well in the room.”It was a funny, light-hearted thing. I know maybe it seemed to be malicious, but everybody was laughing,” Meier said. “There were people there, at the time, who joked around that he’s mad because he doesn’t know how to play the guitar.”
But after having talked to the man, Meier said it was an obvious political statement.
“Taylor Swift, it became a political thing, and that was kind of the gist of it, just a light-hearted bit of a dig at Taylor for coming out politically and entertainers using their influence to influence politics,” Meier said.
Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 11, leading to bad blood with GOP nominee Donald Trump who sees her as an anti-hero.
Trump carried Ellis County with 66.19% of the vote of the vote in 2020, while the winner, Joe Biden, and his VP pick, Harris, got 32.17%.
Estes, who owns an electrical wiring business, said he’s a supporter of Trump and wasn’t pleased with Swift’s endorsement of Harris.
“Yes, you can connect the dots there,” Estes said.
