“We don’t need a star because we have policy,” said Donald Trump, who has struggled to gain support from A-listers during his campaign.
It’s Election Day and on the night before the anxiety-inducing occasion were held the last campaign events of both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Unlike Harris, Trump has struggled to appeal to many A-list celebrities, and he has been showing signs of envy – masked as dubious facts, naturally.
Indeed, while celebrities including Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Jon Bon Jovi turned out in force for Kamala Harrisin Philadelphia for her rally finale – during which Oprah Winfrey brought first-time voters to the stage – Donald Trump had to make do with his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former Fox News host and conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, and baseball star Roberto Clemente’s son.
And he was decidedly unimpressed with Harris’ celebrity lineup.
At his own rally in Pittsburgh, which overlapped with Harris’ event in the city, the former president criticized Harris for one celebrity endorsement in particular: Beyoncé.
He spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Harris rally in Houston last month.
“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.
Beyoncé did not perform at the event but was joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, and gave a joyful, impassioned speech met with cheers.
Previously, Beyoncé allowed the Harris campaign to take on her track ‘Freedom’ as its anthem – a song that the Trump campaign also tried to use, which led the singer’s record label to issue a cease-and-desist letter.
Trump added that Harris should have learned a lesson from Hillary Clinton and had Beyoncé speak after her, saying: “That way the people stay.”
In 2016, Beyoncé performed at a campaign event for Democratic nominee Clinton in Cleveland in the days leading up to the election.
“They booed like hell, but the press didn’t play that,” Trump continued in his description of Beyoncé’s appearance at the Harris event.
He insisted his campaign doesn’t need celebrities to pack in a crowd, adding: “We don’t need a star because we have policy. We have great policy.”
“Great policy” and the aforementioned Megyn Kelly, who delivered a fiery speech at Trump’s closing rally, something which represented a full-circle moment after the former president called her “nasty” in 2016.
When Kelly was a Fox News host in 2016, she questioned Trump during the first debate of the Republican primary about whether he had the temperament to be president. Trump largely dismissed Kelly’s question at the debate, but later he went directly after her.
“She’s not very tough and not very sharp,” Trump told CNN in a phone interview. “I don’t respect her as a journalist.”
Referring to Kelly’s questions during the debate, Trump said: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” The comment was widely viewed as a sexist reference to menstruation.
Trump later boycotted another debate on Fox because Kelly was one of the moderators.
The hatchet seems to have been buried, as Kelly defended Trump yesterday against recent controversies, including his repeated pledge to be the “protector” of women and his opposition to transgender athletes participating in sports.
“He will be a protector of women and it’s why I’m voting for him,” said Kelly. “He will close the border and he will keep the boys out of women’s sports where they don’t belong.”
Kelly left Fox for NBC News, and she was later taken off the air following an uproar when she suggested it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween.
