The artwork for the song that Donald Trump features in alongside a choir featuring men in prison for their part in the January 6 insurrection.
The concept of the charity single has a lot to answer for.
While the cause can be virtuous, the starving of Africa for example, with Band Aid’s Do They Know it’s Christmas and USA for Africa’s We Are the World, the actual music can best be described politely as merely the medium for the message.
In Australia we had Santa Never Made it to Darwin penned to raise money for the relief of that city after Cyclone Tracy hit at Christmas in 1974. Down the decades many songs have been taken out of their original setting to raise money for the unfortunate, the poor, the destitute, the discriminated against.
And then along comes Donald J Trump, that downtrodden waif of the streets, that victim of the vicious vindictiveness of his enemies. And his enemies are everywhere; in the media, in the political world. In the polling booths.
After many years being the favourite son of the Murdoch empire and Fox News, there seems to have been falling out, all revealed in a lawsuit brought by the company Dominion which is suing Fox News, alleging that the network disseminated false information about its voting machines, which in turn played a part in Trump’s loss.
Trump recently tweeted this of Rupert: “If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the Presidential Election of 2020 … was not Rigged & Stollen, then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS should get out of the News Business as soon as possible.’’
He also tweeted: ‘’The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!’’
And at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he declared: “We are going to finish what we started. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory.”
So, the talk now is of war. It is the only setting Trump knows. Peace? What is that?
So, where else does he take his odious crusade to have his voice, and his cause, heard? Why to the charity single. Which raises the question, what did the poor charity single ever do to him?
Trump has released, in cohort with a prison choir, a charity single on streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube.
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The members of the choir are in jail for their part in the January 6 insurrection two years ago on the Capitol. Trump, of course, could not admit defeat to Joe Biden, and urged his followers to take his and their grievances out on the Capitol. The mob dutifully lay siege to the seat of American democracy.
The Guardian reported Forbes magazine stating that money raised would go to the families of those imprisoned. It also said the project would not “benefit families of people who assaulted a police officer”.
“Citing ‘a person with knowledge of the project’, Forbes said the choir consisted of about 20 inmates at the Washington DC jail who were recorded over a jailhouse phone.”
In the aftermath, it has been reported that almost a dozen deaths have been linked to that siege, more than 1000 people have been charged, with many convicted. Trump was impeached for incitement but it fell over when loyal Republicans voted the process down. He is still not clear though. The Department of Justice is looking into criminal referrals made to it from the January House committee over his role in the insurrection.
Which segues to the truth denier’s part on the single (irony, you can leave the building at this point). As the prison choir sings the national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner, Trump utters the Pledge of Allegiance. These are the words:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Liberty and justice for all? Really, it’s a surprise Trump can say the words.
The Guardian quoted Robert Maguire, research director for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: “I have never been more repulsed by the mere existence of a song than one sung by a president who tried to do a coup and a literal ‘choir’ of insurrectionists who tried to help him.”
The Star-Spangled Banner has been taken for political purposes and turned into an artistic tour de force of protest. Witness Jimi Hendrix’s version. He didn’t need to sing. His guitar did the talking.
If there’s a low road Trump will take it. This single is the latest version. Become the victim, say the lie over and over and over again until it warps reality, until it comes to mean something.
Even the voice of a hollow man will find ears willing to listen. You would think the moral obligation would be to be deaf to it. If not, then surely, democracy has died more than just a little death.
