Donald Trump is so furious at how his Freedom 250 concerts have already flopped that he wants people fired, according to a report.
A White House source told the Daily Mail that the 79-year-old president is irate at how much he has been embarrassed by “Z-list” celebrities pulling out of the shows celebrating America’s 250th birthday at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between June 25 and July 10.
While several musical artists were announced for the shows, almost all of them—including the Commodores, Morris Day, Poison frontman Bret Michaels, Young MC, and headliner Martina McBride—have announced they will not be performing, claiming they were duped into believing it was a nonpartisan event rather than one organized by Trump loyalists.
The situation surrounding the concerts had gotten so bad that Trump threatened to “cancel it” and make himself a headliner at a hastily organized rally in D.C. later this month instead.
“Allowing Z-list celebrities to embarrass the president like this, in a world where actual celebrities like Jason Aldean and Nicki Minaj actually support him, isn’t just embarrassing, it’s grossly negligent, and firings are coming,” a White House insider told the Daily Mail.
“It’s a circular firing squad over there. Some artists hadn’t even been contractually locked down before the announcements were made.”
Fab Morvan, the surviving member of the lip-syncing ’80s pop duo Milli Vanilli, was the latest artist to confirm they would be pulling out of the event.
“Throughout the week, it turned into a circus. And this is not what I signed for,” Morvan told CNN on Monday. “I’m not into politics. So you hear it first here. I’m not attending [the] celebration.”
Morvan added that his concerns were first raised when rapper Young MC pulled out of the event just hours after the bill was announced, claiming “artists were never told about any political involvement” with the shows.
A source familiar with planning the Freedom 250 events desperately tried to suggest that the artists had no intention of performing and announced they were pulling out to embarrass Trump.
“They have been irrelevant for years, and my theory is that they just wanted their 15 minutes of fame. It was a publicity stunt,” they told the Daily Mail.
“We’ll get the money back. We could force them to play—we’ve already paid them, they are under contract—but it’s not worth it,” the source added.
In a typical Truth Social meltdown, Trump suggested the artists who pulled out got the “yips” and that he could headline the event instead, as he gets “much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar.”
Vanilla Ice, who has played Mar-a-Lago multiple times, Flo Rida, and C+C Music Factory are the only remaining acts from the original lineup still scheduled to perform at the Freedom 250 shows.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
