By Nick Catoggio
Friday, May 29, 2026
To understand how washed-up most of the acts
that were booked for the “Freedom 250” celebration in Washington are,
reflect on this: In more than one case, it’s not clear at the moment whether a
band is still planning to perform because it’s not clear whether that band
still exists.
For instance, Milli Vanilli may or may not be there
depending upon how you define Milli Vanilli. “Jodie Rocco, one of the singers
for the group, told the Associated Press that she and her sister, Linda, were
surprised to see Milli Vanilli listed in the lineup,” Deadline noted. But “the group’s remaining original
member, Fab Morvan, … told Consequence of Sound that he will be
performing.”
And yes, he plans to actually sing this time.
How about C+C Music Factory? Frontman Freedom Williams, who now owns
the group’s trademark, declared on social media that he’s no fan of the
president but will be onstage next month because “the day I let you motherf—ers
tell me what to do is the day I die.” Founder Robert Clivillés washed his hands
of the event, however, asking fans to please “know that this is not a C&C
Music Factory Participation.”
Somehow, the Commodores managed to pull together and officially cancel their planned appearance even though
membership in that band has been hazy
for the better part of 50 years.
As I write this on Friday morning, only two of the nine
acts announced for the festival are still unambiguously scheduled. Young MC pulled out on Thursday, as did former Poison
singer Bret Michaels, lamenting that “a celebration of our country
has turned into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part
of.” But the most surprising withdrawal was country star Martina McBride, the
closest thing the event had to a true A-lister. I thought “Freedom 250” would
be the equivalent of a state fair, she explained,
alluding to its official name, but “yesterday things started changing and
what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening.”
Whether America will receive an official musical tribute
for its semiquincentennial now depends on the continued fortitude of Flo Rida and Vanilla Ice. Unless, I suppose, the White
House wants to give
Marco Rubio yet another job.
Who knows? He might volunteer.
In case it isn’t clear, “Freedom 250” is a Donald Trump
production, created last year by executive order to organize official celebrations for a
once-in-several-lifetimes iteration of July Fourth. The artists bailing on the
event are doing so for the same reason as the
artists who bailed on gigs at the Kennedy Center after it became the “Trump
Kennedy Center.” (Well, temporarily.) They don’t want any Trump-stink on them,
either because the odor offends them personally or because it offends too many
otherwise loyal fans.
Protesting the president by canceling a random concert is
one thing, though. Canceling an invitation to perform for the country on a very
special national birthday is arguably quite another. “Gratuitously stigmatizing
participation in government-sanctioned 250th celebrations is a civic tragedy,
not to mention a huge missed opportunity,” political strategist Liam
Donovan complained on Thursday as the boycott grew.
It’s not gratuitous, though.
Atheist Christmas.
The engine of civic apathy is believing that America is
still America and always will be, no matter how Americans or their government
behave.
That just ain’t so, unless you also believe that Milli
Vanilli is still Milli Vanilli as long as whoever’s on stage insists on calling
themselves that.
This year of all years, it feels like a cosmic joke that
Americans will mark a major anniversary of declaring their independence from
monarchy. Many of us quite like having a monarch, we’ve discovered, provided
that he’s on our side. But vestigial respect for the Founders will oblige us to
trudge out to parades and whatnot on the Fourth of July and pretend that we’re
celebrating what America is, not what it was.
We’re on a
ship of Theseus whose most essential components we chose, needlessly, to
replace. The most dignified thing we could do at this point is acknowledge that
instead of retreating into patriotic delusions. And in fairness, many of us
have: It’s not a coincidence that pride in being American hit a record low during year one of
postliberalism’s return to power.
A more conscientious people would recognize the magnitude
of what they’ve done and observe the Fourth this year somberly, if at all. But
that would be Grinch-y, I realize. Children shouldn’t be denied the fun of a
national birthday party just because their parents chose to hollow out the
constitutional order. Maybe a few will even take the lessons of the founding
that they’ll inevitably be taught this summer to heart.
Think of this year’s Fourth as the patriotic equivalent
of a secular Christmas, then. The reason for the season is absent, but it’s
still worth doing because there’s a lot about it to enjoy.
I don’t begrudge anyone for celebrating a secular
Christmas. Celebrating an atheist Christmas, though, would be weird and
disrespectful. It’s one thing to overlook the reason for the season, it’s
another to celebrate it in a spirit of aggressive skepticism. That’s mockery,
not indifference.
Trump-sanctioned “Freedom 250” events are the civic
version of an atheist Christmas.
Saluting the American experiment at the invitation of an
administration that’s trying to end it makes a mockery of the founding. As
we’re forever being reminded in new and creative ways, Trumpism yearns for autocracy and
is aggressively skeptical of liberal restraints on it. To agree to perform at a
presidential event under those circumstances is, at best, to take no side
between Enlightenment ideals and the postliberal kampf against them and,
at worst, to take the wrong side. It implies that there’s no contradiction
between American patriotism and Caesarism, which is precisely what nationalist
cretins want people to believe.
America is still America, right? An administration of
fascist crooks is as legitimate and simpatico with the Madisonian vision as any
other. So why treat the events it sponsors any differently than those that came
before?
It certainly is a “civic tragedy,” to borrow Donovan’s
phrase, that we’ve arrived at a point where performers feel uncomfortable
performing at a presidential “Freedom 250” event. But that civic tragedy was
engineered by Trump and his supporters, not Young MC.
If that’s not enough to justify a boycott, though, don’t
worry. There are other reasons.
Real Americans.
It should not surprise you to learn that “Freedom 250”
suffers from some of the same pathologies as other Trump 2.0 endeavors.
In the first place, it’s a power grab.
The United States has had a congressionally approved
commission in place to organize semiquincentennial events since 2016. That
body, known as “America250,” was bigfooted last year when our megalomaniac president
created “Freedom 250” to exert more personal control over this year’s events.
You can guess what happened next. “America250 has
received only $25 million of the $150 million appropriated last summer for the
celebrations,” the New York Times reported in February, “far less than
the $100 million it had asked for. [A Democratic congresswoman] said she
believed Freedom 250 would get the bulk of the rest, but she still hoped her
group would receive another $25 million.” As of that writing, $10 million of
“America250’s” funding had already been repurposed by “Freedom 250” for its own
priorities.
Congress wanted one thing, the president wanted another,
the president got his way. That’s patriotism, postliberal-style.
“Freedom 250” is also a grift.
Be it the president’s
inaugural, the White House ballroom, or official celebrations of America’s
birthday, there’s no civic occasion that Trump and his team won’t use to peddle
influence to rich donors. In its February piece on this year’s July Fourth
events, the Times noted that “those who give $1 million or more will get
invitations to a ‘private Freedom 250 thank you reception’ hosted by Mr. Trump,
with a ‘historic photo opportunity.’ Those who give $2.5 million or more also
are being offered speaking roles at an event in Washington on July 4.”
The white-trash
fight on the White House lawn on Trump’s birthday is also part of “Freedom
250” and is offering special access to “high rollers” willing to cough up $1.5 million to attend. If you believe this
administration will scrupulously apply all of the money flowing in from the
racket it’s created to the intended purpose of paying for patriotic
festivities, you must
have been in
a coma for the past 16 months.
Needless to say, “Freedom 250” is also an excuse for the
president to put his personal brand on the semiquincentennial.
Making an indelible mark on American identity has plainly
become his highest priority in office, which is no small thing in the middle of
a cost-of-living crisis and still-lingering war with Iran. The ballroom, the
Kennedy Center, the reflecting pool, and the victory arch (which is also tied to the 250th
anniversary of independence) are all being made to his liking. The currency
will soon carry his name, if not his face. And official documents proving U.S. citizenship
will feature his likeness, presumably to remind the bearer at a
glance of what it means to be an American now.
The last of which I support, to be clear. It’s long past
time for the people of this country to stop hiding behind the antiquated honor
of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and accept who they really are.
You can understand why all of this might make a performer
nervous about signing up for a “Freedom 250” event, though. Are they
celebrating America or celebrating Trump? Will they walk onstage to find a
giant portrait of the president behind them, like the one that now festoons the Justice Department? Will he grab the mic
after the concert ends and, instead of saying some warm words about the
founding, start babbling about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood”?
A core belief of Trumpism is that there’s no meaningful
distinction between the leader and the state. The president relishes that idea
because it justifies using his office to enrich himself; postliberal ideologues
relish it because it justifies amassing all government power in the person of
Caesar. Either way, it is preposterous to participate in a state event
that has Trump’s orange-y fingerprints on it and play dumb about who and what
that event is ultimately meant to glorify.
If he and his fans don’t like that, they might consider
dialing back the cult worship and demagoguery about “real Americans” or “heritage Americans” a notch. After all, the more
insistently they equate dimwit populist adulation of the president with
authentic American identity, the less non-chuds will want to celebrate America.
You’re free to belong to a ruthlessly tribal movement that aims to dominate and
punish rival tribes, but in that case don’t demand that everyone “come
together” for a party hosted by the tribal chieftain so that he isn’t
embarrassed by poor turnout. That invitation will be treated with precisely the
amount of respect it deserves.
Worse to come.
I’ll end this piece on the same note on which I ended the
one about
artists boycotting the Kennedy Center: Anyone considering serving the
administration in some capacity at this point needs to reckon with the
probability that this presidency will get much worse.
Trump is down to 34 percent approval already and may yet flip his wig in all
sorts of garish ways that end up carving off further chunks of his support.
Imagine resisting intense pressure from his critics to skip the “Freedom 250”
event and opting to perform—only to have him turn around this fall and try to
cancel the midterm elections.
I didn’t know he’d do that, you might say
afterward to the thousands of people on social media screeching at you for
having accepted the gig. You should have, they’ll reply.
And they’ll be right.
That might also explain why, apart from McBride, even a
presumptively right-wing cohort like country music stars has been missing in
action from the event. One would think Trump could land a top-tier artist like
Morgan Wallen or Luke Combs for a show on the National Mall to celebrate 250
years of independence, but maybe that’s too much of a risk for them at this
point. “I don’t know how crazy the next two years might get,” they may be
thinking. Why risk getting any stink on you when you don’t know how intensely
stinky it’ll end up being?
Americans learned no lessons from January 6, but perhaps
some of its musical acts did.
The irony in all this is that serial cancellations by
performers mean the “Freedom 250” organizers will need to scramble to fill out
the bill, and that inevitably means a line-up that’s more MAGA than the
original one. Lee Greenwood will presumably be dispatched from the old folks’
home, and Kid Rock will be sobered up with black coffee before being ushered
onstage. If you want the semiquincentennial to be less Trumpy, cheering on a
boycott by non-Trumpy acts is a funny way to do it.
But I’m okay with it. Like putting the president’s face
on passports, an all-MAGA line-up at an official state celebration has the
virtue of being true to what the country has become. Having chosen to be
governed by people who believe the country should be all for “us” and not at
all for “them” 364 days out of the year, Americans should have to own it on day
365 as well.
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