North Texas man buys guitar signed by Taylor Swift for $4k only to destroy it

A North Texas man paid $4,000 for an autographed Taylor Swift 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.
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The video was shot Saturday at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, about 30 miles south of Dallas. A spokesperson for the event did not immediately respond to an email or phone call from The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, but told WFAA he was surprised by the attention the incident has received.
“It wasn’t meant to be mean or malicious,” Ellis County Wild Game spokesperson Craig Meier told the outlet. “He was just making a lighthearted statement showing disapproval of people in the entertainment industry trying to influence politics.”
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.
Meier told WFAA the money benefited children in the Ellis County community.
“It was just a funny thing that happened at our annual event. The crowd thought it was hilarious,” Meier said of the guitar smashing. “The important thing is that 100% of the money raised goes directly to local youth and agricultural education programs. At the end of the day, the kids win and will benefit from this.”