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With just three weeks to go before the crucial Nov. 5 presidential election, Donald Trump is doubling-down on a lot of his most controversial campaign rally greatest hits. In addition to denigrating his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, by employing abelist slurs at a recent event, twice impeached convicted felon Trump threatened to employ the military to “handle” his left-wing detractors in an weekend interview. The MAGA leader also bailed on a planned town hall in Pennsylvania on Monday (Oct. 14) in favor of dancing along to a 40 minute playlist of songs featuring a number of artists who’ve explicitly asked him (more than once) to stop playing their music at his rallies.
According to ABC, the event in Oaks, PA in the crucial swing state was twice interrupted by medical emergencies in the crowd in the overheated Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds. Half an hour in, an attendee was stretchered out of the venue, which reportedly prompted Trump to ask the sound person to fire up Schubert’s operatic “Ave Maria.” After a second person fainted and was attended to, Trump asked for the doors to be opened to let some fresh air in, before being told that was not possible for security reasons.
So, after making a joke about people passing out, Trump dispensed with questions and kicked off a bizarre 30-plus minute playlist song and dance during which he cued up a number of well-known tracks by artists who have explicitly, and repeatedly, asked him to cease and desist from playing their music at his rallies.
According to video of the evening, Trump played Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as well as Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain,” James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” Elvis’ “An American Trilogy,” the Village People’s “YMCA” and Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye.”
In a statement issued Tuesday morning (Oct. 15), Harris supporter Wainwright lambasted Trump for playing the singer’s version of Cohen’s beloved 1984 hymn to the universal struggle of love and heartbreak.
“The song ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen has become an anthem dedicated to peace, love and acceptance of the truth. I’ve been supremely honored over the years to be connected with this ode to tolerance,” wrote Wainwright. “Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy. Of course, I in no way condone this and was mortified, but the good in me hopes that perhaps in inhabiting and really listening to the lyrics of Cohen’s masterpiece, Donald Trump just might experience a hint of remorse over what he’s caused. I’m not holding my breath.” The statement also noted that the publishing company for the Cohen estate has sent a cease-and-desist order to the Trump campaign.
GNR and O’Connor’s reps have pointedly asked Trump not to play their music during his campaign stops, with the Village People threatening to sue the former reality TV star last year over what they said was a lookalike band playing their hits at his Mar-a-Lago Florida private club after years of asking him to remove their 1978 queer disco classic from his queue. At press time, spokespeople for all three acts had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Trump’s Monday playlist event, though a spokesperson for VP co-founder Victor Willis said a statement was in the works.
The candidate vying for a second White House stint — in the midst of his third overall campaign — has accumulated a long list of acts who do not want to be associated with his divisive, frequently mendacious rhetoric. Over the course of two weeks this summer, Beyoncé, the Foo Fighters and Jack White all slammed the Trump campaign for using their music without permission.
They joined a long list of acts who’ve made similar requests since Trump first ran for the nation’s highest office in 2016, a roster that includes: Adele, Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie, Celine Dion, Earth, Wind & Fire, George Harrison, Neil Young, Isaac Hayes, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Ozzy Osbourne, Prince’s estate and R.E.M., among many others.
Trump has mostly ignored those pleas, even in the face of a lawsuit from the estate of Hayes, though according to previous Billboard reporting there is a long tradition of campaigns hijacking artist’s songs for their own political ends with little blowback. In reality, if a campaign obtains a license to use songs from the catalogs of the leading performing rights organizations BMI and ASCAP — which cover nearly every recognizable song you can think of — they are free to play them. There is, however, a “caveat” in the license that allows the songwriters to object to use of their compositions in a political campaign, which could result in the rights orgs pulling a song from a candidate’s license.
In August, the Foo Fighters vowed to donate royalties from “My Hero” to the Harris campaign following Trump’s blasting of the song at a rally where he was endorsed by rival-turned-supporter independent presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At the time, the Independent reported that it had reviewed documents that appeared to confirm that the Trump campaign had licensed the song from BMI’s Songview service.
It was unknown at press time if the Trump campaign had licenses for the other songs played at Monday event, and a spokesperson had not yet returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
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Geraldo Rivera, a longtime television journalist and pundit, has chosen a side in the upcoming presidential election despite not falling in line with his political party. Taking to X, formerly Twitter, Geraldo Rivera openly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris while taking aim at former president Donald Trump and referring to him as a “Sore Loser.”
Geraldo Rivera, 81, who currently works as a correspondent for NewsNation, took to X on Monday (October 13) to deliver a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump while highlighting his support for Vice President Kamala Harris. In his reply, Rivera did not mince words and made certain to lay out why he decided to vote against his party in this election cycle.
From X:
The last time President Trump and I spoke was Friday, November 13, 2020, when he called me at home. It was ten days after his narrow lost to Joe Biden. He was calling to get my take on the controversies surrounding the election, which appeared to have been decided by a handful of votes in several states. I asked him what he would do if the vote count remained against him. As I reported on Fox News that same morning, Friday the 13th, he told me he was a reasonable man and would do the right thing if that time came.
It never did. Instead, President Trump embarked on an increasingly menacing campaign to discredit the 2020 election. With a motley supporting cast of increasingly fringe characters, he careened from one bizarre theory to the next, offering no meaningful proof, that he had been robbed by the Democrats.
None exists. If you are a Republican, Donald Trump has made a liar of you. He has coaxed and intimidated tens of millions into pretending he was reelected in 2020, and that the election was stolen.
In furtherance of that Big Lie, on January 6, 2021, Trump incited and unleashed the violent attack on the center of democracy, the U.S. Capitol for which he was Impeached. As his followers trashed that sacred space, he was on the phone urging Vice President Mike Pence essentially to overturn the will of the American people. Pence refused to put Trump ahead of the Constitution. Trump stabbed the Constitution in the back.
Rivera’s lengthy post goes on to add that anyone supporting Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him are “adopting his big lie about the stolen election makes you a liar” and he clarified the reason he’s voting for Harris by saying “Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution.”
A spokesperson for Donald Trump retorted to Geraldo Rivera’s X reply by stating “Who’s Geraldo?” although the pair clearly know each other. The Harris-Walz campaign has yet to respond to the endorsement.
Sore Loser
With three weeks to go until Election Day, Donald J. Trump stands a reasonable chance of becoming the 47th President of the United States. Despite assassination attempts, impeachments, special counsels, felony convictions and hundreds of millions in civil penalties,…
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) October 14, 2024
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Photo: Getty
Jon Bon Jovi announced his endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris for President in a song on Friday, spotlighting the patriotic Forever album tune “The People’s House” featuring the War and Treaty in a post explaining his decision.
“The People’s House is a song that celebrates this beautiful place that we call home, from sea to shining sea. @thewarandtreaty,” Bon Jovi wrote. “The truth matters. And the truth is on election day I’ll be voting for @KamalaHarris and @TimWalz because I believe in the power of we, not of me. I’ve written a song reminding us that out of many, we are still one.”
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff thanked the Jersey rocker in a Bon Jovi-quoting post on X, writing, “It’s my wife, and it’s now or never. Election’s coming in November. Thanks for supporting Kamala, @JonBonJovi!” alongside a pic of him posing with the band’s singer.
Bon Jovi has long been a supporter of the Democratic party, lining up behind President Joe Biden at the current commander in chief’s 2021 inauguration day “Celebrating America” concert, where he performed an acoustic take on the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” as well as a pre-election “I Will Vote” concert that also featured Jennifer Hudson, Ciara, Ne-Yo, Sara Bareilles, A$AP Ferg, P!nk, John Legend and others.
After replacing Biden following the President’s surprise decision to drop out of the race in July following a disastrous debate performance against three-time candidate former President Donald Trump, Harris has racked up a bumper crop of A-list endorsements. Among the chart-topping musicians lining up behind the Vice President and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are: P!nk, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Beyoncé, Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, Megan Thee Stallion, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift.
Twice impeached convicted felon Trump reacted with his typical disdain when Swift helped cap August’s Democratic National Convention by posting a full-throated endorsement of Harris, announcing on his Truth Social platform, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”
Check out Bon Jovi’s post and Emhoff’s response below.
Idina Menzel has experienced more than her fair share of people mispronouncing her name — but she’s drawing the line when it comes to Kamala Harris.
With Election Day less than a month away, the Broadway alum issued a video PSA via Instagram on Sunday demonstrating the exact way to say the VP’s moniker. “You have to get the pronunciation of Kamala Harris correct,” she says in the clip, standing outside while addressing the camera. “It’s getting really exhausting. It’s Kamala, like a comma. ‘Comma-la.’”
“I tend to be an expert on pronunciations of names, since mine is always screwed up, as you know,” Menzel continued, before referencing one of the most viral moments of her career: when John Travolta butchered her name while introducing her performance at the 2014 Oscars.
“And not just as ‘Adele Dazeem,’” the Frozen star says. “People call me Indiana, ‘Eye-dina’ … I was just at an event in Oklahoma, and they called me ‘Ay-deena Menzul.’”
Though Menzel says people are constantly mispronouncing her name, Travolta’s flub is definitely the most memorable. Though he’d later say that a last-second change to the teleprompter was to blame, he mistakenly set up her performance of “Let It Go” by saying, “Please welcome the wickedly talented, one and only Adele Dazeem.”
At the time, Menzel took it in stride and, at the next year’s ceremony, got the Grease actor back by referring to him as “Glom Gazingo” as the two presented onstage. Earlier this year, the Rent performer celebrated the viral moment’s 10-year anniversary with a funny TikTok, telling the camera: “Hey, Adele Dazeem! It’s Idina Menzel … I just wanted to say happy birthday. Sending you so much love and positive energy.”
When it comes to Harris, however, Menzel isn’t joking around. At the end of her PSA, the star adds, “I think that the vice president and soon-to-be president should have her name pronounced correctly.”
Watch Menzel’s tutorial on how to say Kamala Harris’ name below.
Neil Young has made it clear he’s no fan of Donald Trump. The “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” guitar hero has threatened to sue twice impeached convicted felon Trump before for playing his songs at campaign rallies, and over the weekend Young made it clear that he does not want to give the former President a second chance in Washington.
“Kamala Harris — She is an honest forthright truth teller who is experienced in the White House, free from ambiguity or evasiveness, who goes straight to the point,” wrote Young on his Archives site on Friday about the sitting Vice President, who is less than a month away from possibly becoming the nation’s first female President.
“Clear headed, young enough to hold the office for a couple of bright future terms, Kamala Harris is a good person who is unafraid to take on criminals and uphold the law of the USA. She’s my candidate for the future of this country,” he continued.
Toronto-born Young, 78 — who became a naturalized American citizen in 2020 — has been very vocal about his disdain for Trump, who continues to peddle the false narrative that he won the 2020 election over President Joe Biden, while over the weekend hurling his latest insult at his opponent when he referred to former Senator and California Attorney General Harris as “retarded.”
“Kamala Harris will take on the billionaire class and make them pay their fair share of taxes,” Young concluded. “She will not owe them favors. She is a kind, considerate American. Cast your vote for a beautiful future for your family. Kamala Harris for President.”
After years of threatening to sue Trump for using his music at campaign rallies without permission, as well as penning a scathing open letter to the former reality TV star in which he referred to Trump as “a disgrace to my country,” Young’s endorsement is a double-down on his August decision to let Harris’ VP pic, Gov. Tim Walz, officially use his song “Rockin’ in the Free World” during campaign events.
Young joins a growing list of A-list stars who’ve stepped up to support Harris since she unexpectedly jumped into the race in July when President Biden agreed to not seek a second term. Among the artists proudly supporting Harris are: Beyoncé, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Barbra Streisand, Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion, P!nk, Bon Iver, Bruce Springsteen, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and many more.
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Michael Strahan, easily one of the best NFL players to ever exist and currently a beloved on-air journalist, would not be mistaken to be a professor of politics and that is not a slight. That point was proven after Michael Strahan interviewed Gov. Tim Walz and asked the Minnesota governor why Vice President Kamala Harris hadn’t enacted any of her proposed policies in the past three and a half years.
In a clip that is trending on X now, Michael Strahan is seen speaking with Gov. Walz in an interview for Good Morning America that aired on Friday (October 11). Much of the discussion had to do with the current presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump along with other pertinent topics.
The portion of the interview that had some scratching their heads shows Strahan asking, with a straight face, what Walz would say to critics of Harris who claim she hasn’t put forth any of the policies she’s spoken about on the campaign trail in her time in office.
Walz, clearly in ready-to-answer mode, flipped it back by saying that to pass policies you need a “partner in Congress” and correctly took aim at Trump and his time at the helm. Perhaps because time was of the essence, Walz seemingly side-stepped giving Strahan a much-needed lesson in how the White House works.
The tough line of questioning from Strahan was necessary considering the Harris-Walz campaign is vying for votes in a reported tight race. That said, Walz seemed to duck answering questions and waffled on a couple of answers which naturally caught the eyes of his detractors.
The Trump-Vance campaign has sought to frame Vice President Harris as a do-nothing politician although if you asked anyone to state with Vice President Mike Pence did in office aside from standing up to his boss during the transfer of power struggle, they’d be grasping for examples.
The truth is that the role of the Vice President of the United States is a specific one and does not carry the wide-ranging power that the president’s office holds.
Of course, if you paid attention in civics class or watched some of those classic Schoolhouse Rock segments, folks would stop this charade.
On X, folks are reacting to Michael Strahan floating an empty strawman question to Gov. Tim Walz and we’ve got those reactions below.
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Photo: ABC News
With the 2024 presidential election just a month away, one person who will not be hitting the polls is Alabama Barker.
The 18-year-old daughter of Travis Barker went live on social media recently, where she revealed that while she is now old enough to vote, she doesn’t want to. “Not voting isn’t crazy in my opinion at all, because if I don’t feel like I have the exact education for what I’m voting for, how is it right to vote something I’m not completely educated on?” she explained in the livestream, seen by Billboard. “I could educate myself, but why would I do that if I genuinely don’t care? I’m just honest.”
She continued, “I don’t care to vote if I don’t know exactly what’s going on. I don’t think that’s wrong, and I completely stand on that and stand by it because, first of all, I just turned 18 and I never voted before. I’ve never voted. If I don’t want to vote, I don’t have to vote. If I don’t want to be in politics, I don’t have to be in politics.”
Alabama did note, however, that she does “have an opinion on what I feel is right because of what I’ve been seeing,” before adding that “one of the [candidates] is just a mess.” She did not reveal whether she was talking about Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump or Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris.
While Alabama is not voting, a number of other public figures are. Most recently, Bruce Springsteen voiced his support for Harris, joining a list of other celebrities including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Stevie Nicks, Cardi B, Jason Isbell, John Legend, Katy Perry and many more.
Meanwhile, Jason Aldean, Kid Rock, Kanye West and Sexyy Red are among the artists who are backing Trump in this year’s election.
By now you surely have heard or read stories about how Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff are huge vinyl nerds. The Democratic presidential candidate and Second Gentleman have made a habit of popping into local record stores to pick up records in the midst of the harried campaign season. But on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show on Tuesday (Oct. 8), Harris opened up a bit more about her musical obsessions, beginning the chat with a touching story about how she and Emhoff reacted to the news that Prince died back in April 2016.
Stern opened the special afternoon interview by playing his favorite Prince album — the 1989 Batman soundtrack — cueing up “Batdance” because he said he was aware Harris was a big fan of the late singer. Though Stern was adamant the Purple One’s 11th studio album — which sat at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart for six weeks — was his finest work, Harris adamantly, and politely, disagreed.
“No, 1999 I thought was spectacular, you can go back to his early days. Him on the guitar, there was just nothing like it,” said Harris, who also stopped by The View and The Late Show on Tuesday as part of an intensified media schedule in the final month of her still too-close-to-call race with convicted felon former President Donald Trump.
“Even you look at Bruno Mars today, who’s just been influenced by Prince,” she said, before sharing the anecdote about how she and Emhoff honored the “Purple Rain” star after they heard about his death from an accidental fentanyl overdose at age 57. “The night he passed Doug and I were in L.A. and actually just — he and I have very different musical tastes… [he’s into] Depeche Mode, that’s him, I grew up kind of hip-hop — but Prince is the one intersection where we both love and we just played Prince all night long. We dance, we sang his songs, that was our little tribute.”
The hour-long interview, the longest sit-down Harris has done since becoming the surprise, 11th-hour Democratic candidate following President Biden’s unprecedented decision to step down from running for a second term back in July, touched on a number of salient political topics as well. Harris said she was incensed at reports in a new book by legendary political reporter Bob Woodward that Trump sent hard-to-get COVID testing machines to his friend Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the midst of the pandemic, adding that she thinks the twice impeached Trump is getting played by his autocratic friends.
“I grew up in the neighborhood,” Harris told Stern. “Some would say you’re getting punked if you stand in favor of somebody who’s an adversary over your friends on principles that we all agree on.” While she declined to say who she would put in her cabinet if elected on Nov. 5 when Stern predicted that it would likely include former Wyoming-congresswoman-turned-Trump-antagonist Republican Liz Cheney — who is voting for Harris, along with her father, former VP Dick Cheney — Harris said, “I gotta win, Howard. I gotta win. I gotta win. And listen, but the thing about Liz Cheney, let me just say, she’s remarkable.”
In addition to revealing her obsession with Formula One racing and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in particular, and calling Trump a “loser” several times, the friendly chat ended with Harris’ recollection of attending U2’s mind-bending opening run at Las Vegas’ Sphere.
“Oh my God have you been to the Sphere?,” Harris excitedly asked Stern when he mentioned that she was spotted at one of the U2 shows there in January. “Let me just say basically everyone should go in with a clear head,” she laughed after Stern, who wore a three-piece black suit for the in-studio chat, said he was freaked out by the reports of the overwhelming visuals that he feared were “too much.”
“Like don’t be high,” Stern said. “Correct,” Harris responded with one of her signature belly laughs. “Because it’s a lot. Like there’s a lot of visual stimulation… I love U2 and actually it was a surprise for Doug.”
Watch Harris talk U2 and Sphere below.
Vice President Kamala Harris joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show for a beer and a candid chat about the state of global politics, Donald Trump, and her whirlwind presidential campaign.
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The interview kicked off with a zinger about Trump’s absence on 60 Minutes, with Colbert stating, “We invited Kamala Harris to be our guest this evening… In the interest of fairness, we also invited Donald Trump to go f— himself.”
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Colbert then asked Harris if she would join him in cracking open a Miller High Life, saying, “Elections are won on vibes. They just want somebody they can have a beer with — so would you like to have a beer with me, so I can tell people what that’s like?”
Harris replied “The last time I had a beer was at a baseball game with Doug [Emhoff],” before quipping, “The champagne of beers!”
The Democratic nominee, who has been on a media blitz to reach younger voters, didn’t hold back during her appearance on the show, especially when it came to addressing Donald Trump’s relationship with leaders such as Vladamir Putin.
“Donald Trump — he openly admires dictators and authoritarians,” Harris remarked. “He has said he wants to be a dictator on Day One if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen, and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favor.”
Harris also addressed new revelations from Bob Woodward’s book, where it was reported that Trump sent Covid tests to Russia in the early days of the pandemic.
“The commander-in-chief of the United States of America must stand strong and defend the principles that we hold dear. We should stand with our allies,” she declared. “We should strengthen the alliances that we have, such as NATO, which is the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen. We must stand with our friend Ukraine where Russia is attempting to change borders by force.”
“I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: Do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?” Harris said.
“And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin? Think about what this means on top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong Un… He thinks that’s his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”
In the episode, Colbert also highlighted a recent surge of misinformation related to Hurricane Milton, a catastrophic storm threatening the West Coast of Florida, and the use of AI-generated images in political manipulation.
“One AI-generated image making the rounds shows Trump wading into floodwaters with first responders—it’s completely fake, but people are falling for it,” Colbert said, critiquing how such tactics are used to sway voters.
Meanwhile, Harris urged those affected to listen to local officials, while criticizing at politicians who “tell lies” for their gain.
“It’s crude,” she said. “Have you no empathy, man, for the suffering of other people? Have you have no sense of purpose if you purport to be a leader?”
Later in the interview, when asked about Trump’s 2020 election loss, Harris reiterated sentiments she’d heard at her rallies. “You lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser. This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”
“It’s accurate. It’s accurate,” Colbert said. Harris added, “This is what happens when I drink beer.”
In a lighter moment during the discussion, the conversation shifted to music when Colbert asked Harris about her favorite Bob Seger songs in an effort to appeal to Michigan voters. Harris responded, “I’ll go Aretha or Eminem.”
Earlier in the day, Harris also appeared on ABC’s The View, where she unveiled a plan to expand Medicare to cover at-home care for seniors. This media tour has included stops on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM Show and the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she discussed the pressing issue of reproductive rights.
Watch Kamala Harris crack a beer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert below.
The commentator has called the star a bad sport, an “elite snob” and much more over the years.