Grieving Mother Slams Trump Team For Using Taylor Swift's Image to Gain Publicity

Maya Thompson, an Arizona mother whose late son inspired Taylor Swift's song, Ronan, has taken to X to criticize former president Donald Trump's fan account for disseminating false material for political campaign purposes. Ronan, age three, passed away in 2011 due to neuroblastoma, an uncommon type of cancer affecting the nervous system. Swift composed a song inspired by the toddler's tale and sang it at a Stand Up To Cancer telethon. The Lover hitmaker was moved to tears after the emotional performance, however, Trump's campaign claimed that Swift was crying because she had lost a significant sum of money for recently endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to the Daily Mail, the grieving mother was appalled to see the throwback picture used in the tweet and called out Trump's camp, "Is this real? Are they using a picture of @taylorswift13 crying after she performed “Ronan” about my child? I'm going to throw up." "BREAKING: Taylor Swift has lost an estimated 150 million dollars over boycotting her merchandise and memorabilia after she endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Thoughts?," the Republican leader's fan page had tweeted along with the picture. Thompson followed up with another tweet: "Can you please help me get this post taken down by telling @realTrumpNewsX to remove this, as these are pictures related to my dead child? I feel so violated; this moment is sacred to me."

After major backlash from fans the controversial misleading tweet was deleted, "It's been deleted. Thank all of you so much. I love you," Thompson tweeted in gratitude. She also posted a clip on TikTok captioned, "The misinformation about Taylor circulating on social media related to my dead child is down."

In the short video, she said: "This was horrifically upsetting to me and very triggering so I did reach out to somebody who I knew could get these photos removed within a matter of 20 minutes and they are down now so I can breathe again and I can go on with my day. The weight of this stuff never goes away but I feel better knowing that these photos are no longer there in this context. Thank you all for always being here and rallying behind the love of Ronan. I'm so thankful for every one of you."   

After her baby passed away, the bereaved mother wrote several blogs about her son, which the Blank Space singer read and referenced while writing the song Ronan. Swift, recognized as a co-writer of the song, based all of the lyrics on the blog that Thompson began writing in August 2010, the month her son was diagnosed. The toddler passed away just three days short of his fourth birthday. After receiving an invitation to Swift's performance in Phoenix in October 2011, Thompson met the pop icon for the first time.

She said, "She had been reading my blog for a while and heard that Ronan had passed away, and she was just devastated." "When she said, 'I wrote a song for Ronan,' my calmness quickly turned to complete and utter frozen shock," the bereaved mother wrote on her blog, Rockstar Ronan.

She continued, "The tears started pouring down my cheeks as soon as I heard her say those words. But her words didn't stop there. Not only did she write a song for you, but she wanted to know if it would be alright to perform it on the nationally televised show." During the song's 2012 Stand Up to Cancer telethon performance, Swift was visibly distressed while singing: "I remember your bare feet down the hallway. I remember your little laugh, race cars on the kitchen floor, plastic dinosaurs, I love you to the moon and back." All of Swift's earnings from the song went to charities that support cancer patients.