John Oliver is not holding back on mocking Donald Trump’s embattled Freedom 250 concert series as artists continue to drop out of the lineup.
After musicians like Martina McBride and Bret Michaels backed out of performing at America’s 250th birthday celebration, a 16-day festival as part of Washington, D.C.’s Great American State Fair, the lineup of artists now consists of Vanilla Ice, C+C Music Factory and Milli Vanilli. Oliver wasted no time calling out the festival’s remaining headliners, quipping during Sunday’s episode of his HBO series Last Week Tonight: “It is a stacked lineup of people that you haven’t thought about since 2009.”
“Honestly, that sounds less like America’s 250th birthday and more like the playlist at Rhonda’s 50th,” he continued. “The only really surprising thing about that lineup is there aren’t special appearances from the ShamWow guy and the Gushers kid whose head turned into a raspberry.”
Several of the artists who have pulled out said that they signed on to the event initially thinking it was nonpartisan.
“Now, crucially, the organization planning that event, Freedom 250, is not the same thing as the non-profit America250, led by a bipartisan board created by Congress,” Oliver said. “Instead, it’s a public-private partnership launched by the White House with some dicey elements, including the fact that for $1 million, donors to it could get access to Trump. And as its political slant became clear, acts who were part of that initial announcement quickly began to bail.”
In the last week, McBride, Michaels, Morris Day and the Time, Young MC and the Commodores have all dropped out of the event, with the majority of the artists explaining that they did not want to contribute to divisiveness.
“Yeah, that is a lot of cancellations,” Oliver admitted. “Even some of the acts currently still scheduled to play may not be the exact people you’re expecting. For instance, neither of the C’s in C+C Music Factory will be performing, it’s just their rapper Freedom Williams, who initially agreed to perform, then considered backing out, then doubled down on performing because he was so mad that people were criticizing him.”
The number of dropouts even led Trump to call for the series to be cancelled.
“We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain. Cancel it,” he wrote Saturday on Truth Social.
That same day, Trump also wrote: “I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”
The festival is set to take place between June 25 and July 10.
