The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 8 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump is desperately trying to salvage the concert series celebrating America’s 250th anniversary after a number of celebrities pulled out. He unleashed a weird tirade on Truth Social in which he basically declared, don’t worry, I’ll be there, so it’ll be great. But we think this whole saga illustrates something deeper about Trump and MAGA’s growing toxicity inside the culture. Indeed, another Trump tirade about all this was strikingly revealing on that front. And this is all becoming apparent to even some MAGA figures who have reacted to all of it in surprising ways.New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard writes really well about Trump, MAGA, and cultural politics. So we’re asking him what gives about all this today. Alex, always good to have you on, man.Alex Shephard: It’s great to be back.Sargent: So the organizers of what’s being called the Great American State Fair, which is being produced by the Trump-backed group Freedom 250 to be held on the National Mall, recently announced the slate of celebrities and musical acts who are set to attend. But then people started pulling out—the rapper Young MC, Poison’s Bret Michaels, country music star Martina McBride, the Commodores, all out. Alex, can you recap what happened here?Shephard: Well, I mean, it’s a little hard to figure out, but based on the initial announcement and statements from the artists, what it seems like happened is that this group that is organizing the Great American State Fair went to artists and seems to have maybe downplayed the political nature of this, a sort of pro-Trump rally, essentially. Since it sort of has fallen apart after it became apparent what this actually was, Trump has tried to step in and save it with his own star power, essentially.Sargent: Well, Trump puts out this tirade on Truth Social in which he suddenly says, we don’t really want singers there. He goes on and he says, the “fabulous Lee Greenwood” will introduce me and the singer Christopher Macchio will sing, plus a few musical groups from the armed forces.And then Trump hits his climax, saying that the event will be attended by, “a fine and highly dignified gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump.”Boy, I don’t know, Alex, that doesn’t sound like a must-see, does it?Shephard: I mean, I think I would still probably rather sit through a Trump rally than watch Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli perform. But no, it does not seem very good. I mean, this is a farce, right? Because how much can a concert featuring Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli really celebrate America? But still, the idea here was to have some sort of event befitting of the country’s 250th anniversary, birthday, whatever you want to call it. And instead, we’re just going to get another Trump rally on the National Mall.Sargent: Exactly. I just want to highlight one other thing Trump says here in this tirade. He says this: “We don’t want singers with no talent. We’ve told them all to stay home.” I mean, Alex, that’s basically, you’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with you. Your thoughts on that?Shephard: Where’s the lie? I think he’s not wrong. But as with many of, you know, him calling out Omarosa or whatever, you’re like, you invited them to begin with. It’s embarrassing for you that you invited them. It’s even more embarrassing that they pulled out. And it’s even more embarrassing than that that you’re doing a rally with Lee Greenwood, who, by the way—I had to look this up before—is even older than Donald Trump. He is at least three years older than Trump. And this guy who’s like an imitation of Pavarotti. It’s preposterous. But again, I think it does kind of capture where we are, less than two years into the second term.Sargent: Well, let’s talk about that because you’ve written really well on it. You’ve written on the fact that after Trump won in 2024, there was kind of an opening for Trump and MAGA to really make inroads into the culture. It was like there was a little Trump boomlet. There was sort of a passing sense—or at the time it didn’t even feel passing, it felt like scary, durable. At that moment it felt like Donald Trump has tapped into something that we didn’t know is there. And that was a scary feeling for a while there. Can you talk about that atmosphere at the time and what people kind of concluded about it?Shephard: Yeah, I mean, it was something that I was writing about and reporting on a fair amount right after Trump won. But I think that there was a sense that for the first time since his movement really started in the summer of 2015, there was carte blanche to just love Trump if you wanted to, or to embrace Trump without repercussions.
