Trump Has to Stop Playing His Favorite Song at Rallies, Judge Rules

Donald Trump can’t use Isaac Hayes’s song “Hold On, I’m Coming” at his rallies anymore thanks to a federal judge in Georgia.

On Tuesday, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, responding to a lawsuit from Hayes’s estate, issued a temporary injunction against Trump using the song “without proper license.” Trump’s campaign has been using the song to close out his speeches this year, including at the Republican National Convention.

As recently as August 9, Trump used “Hold On, I’m Coming” at a rally in Montana, but since then, he’s been using the Village People’s “YMCA,” which he also used in his 2020 presidential campaign. (Not surprisingly, they aren’t happy with Trump using their music either.)

Hayes’s estate hopes to make the measure permanent.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision,” James L. Walker Jr., a lawyer for the Hayes estate, told The New York Times. “Donald Trump has been told he cannot use the music of Isaac Hayes without a license. That was our No. 1 goal. Now we work on the underlying trial and case.”

Trump’s campaign did get one reprieve from the judge: Recordings from previous campaign events where they used Hayes’s song can stay online. But that hardly softens the blow when there’s a long list of artists who don’t want Trump using their music. Just last week, Swedish pop group ABBA objected to Trump using their songs at a Minnesota rally.

Before that, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, the Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler all banned Trump from playing their music for his campaign.

Perhaps Trump ought to stick with artists who actually support him and would want their music played at his campaign events. But then he’d be stuck with Kid Rock, Kanye West, and country music.

Donald Trump’s gaze is turned toward New Hampshire—but possibly for all the wrong reasons.

A top volunteer with the Trump campaign issued an internal message Sunday notifying fellow Trump volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.” That volunteer, Tom Mountain, is reportedly no longer with the campaign.

But Trump couldn’t let the topic of the Granite State pass without attempting to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the mud with him. In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump claimed that New Hampshire was “disrespected” by the fact that Harris “never showed up” during its presidential primary, despite the fact that Harris only became the Democratic nominee a little more than a month ago. Harris also intends to visit New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history.”

Harris has at least a five-point advantage over Trump in New Hampshire, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll published August 19. Still, despite the losing edge—and the Trump campaign’s own internal kerfuffle over it—Trump insisted that New Hampshire’s concerns were still his own.

“I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will!” Trump continued. “To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote TRUMP. Together, we will make your State and America Strong, Safe, and Prosperous AGAIN!”

J.D. Vance’s casual misogyny seems to be a problem that just won’t go away for the Trump campaign.

The Republican vice presidential pick has ardently defended his position that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, deriding Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.” But even some of the most extreme far-right networks can’t get behind Vance’s toxic comments.

In a newly unearthed interview with Newsmax in 2021, the Ohio senator continued to double down on his radical take on childless Americans.

“I realized that we’re being ruled by a childless elite,” Vance said. “It’s not just that they don’t have kids. Of course a lot of people don’t have kids for different reasons. It’s that they’re proud of the fact that they don’t have kids, they think it’s bad if they have kids, they think it’s bad for the environment. They’re proud of their abortions. They shout their abortions from the rooftops.

“That is a dangerous place to live as a country,” he added.

But that didn’t sit right with at least one network host.

“J.D., so I’m curious, I take a little bit of a different stance from you and Steve, respectfully,” said Jenn Pellegrino, referring to her co-host Steve Cortes. “There’s about a quarter of the population that chooses not to have kids. Perhaps some of the hardest-working, most career-driven people that you’ll find.

“Are we not painting this group perhaps with a broad brush? Because not everybody is of that mentality, of not doing it for climate change. Some people just choose a little bit differently,” Pellegrino said. “Perhaps society is changing a little bit.”

But Vance wouldn’t be swayed. “Look, you do not have a future as a country unless you have the next generation,” he said. “So much of what’s going on on the left especially is they’ve become obsessed with the idea that having a kid is an old-fashioned thing.

“If you don’t have kids, who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?” he continued. “Who’s going to care for our elderly? Work the jobs that are necessary? If we don’t have children, then the answer is nobody.”

Watch the exchange below:

Kamala Harris’s campaign will direct $24.5 million of its record-breaking campaign intake to Democrats down the ballot, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Harris’s campaign plans to deliver $10 million each to the House and Senate Democratic campaign arms, and $2.5 million will go to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The Democratic Governors Association will get $1 million, and another million will go to the Democratic Attorneys General Association. The Harris campaign did not specify which of its fundraising arms would be responsible for doling out the cash. 

In the first month since Harris’s candidacy was announced, her campaign raised a whopping $540 million—now it seems that it wants to spread the love. 

It’s not yet clear whether the newfound enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential ticket will successfully translate into widening support for Democratic candidates running in state legislative and other local races, but Harris’s financial support may help give downballot campaigns a boost in otherwise low-profile contests.

Harris’s support could also be key in keeping Democratic control of the Senate, especially for  states where the races have proven to be the most competitive. Those include Ohio and Montana, which are both considered to be “toss-ups.”

Montana’s Senator Jon Tester has emerged as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country, as Donald Trump continues to excel in that state. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s race has become the most expensive in the country, with more than $300 million being spent on advertisements.

One month after The Washington Post revealed that the Egyptian government may have illegally given Donald Trump $10 million in 2017, Democrats have announced they will be investigating the allegations.

Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, led by ranking member Representative Jamie Raskin, announced in a press release Tuesday that they will be “demanding answers” from the Republican presidential nominee not only over the possible bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, but also over evidence that the Justice Department, led at the time by Attorney General William Barr, covered it up.

“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” said the statement, addressing Trump. “Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian President or Government.”

According to the Post’s report, the DOJ in 2017 was investigating Sisi’s efforts to donate$10 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Right before the 2016 election, Trump had announced that he was personally donating $10 million to his campaign, leading some to question where the money came from.

In 2019, federal investigators found that an organization linked to Egyptian intelligence withdrew nearly $10 million in cash just five days before Trump was sworn in as president. If Trump took such a payment, it would be a major violation of federal law. However, the investigation was closed down by Trump’s Justice Department in June 2020, with the supervising prosecutor claiming there was insufficient evidence.

“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” one of the Post’s sources said at the time. “The Justice Department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads—it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.”

In their statement, House Democrats noted that Trump met with Sisi in September 2016, before the election, and called him a “fantastic guy”—odd words to describe a dictator. Trump’s praise would only grow after he was elected president, as he would refer to Sisi as his “favorite dictator.”

Trump has seemingly escaped any scrutiny or questions over a serious accusation of bribery from a foreign government since the Post’s report at the beginning of August. Now, as the presidential race enters its final months, the convicted felon won’t want to deal with another allegation of foreign involvement in his campaign, especially since he still complains about being tied to Russia. Now he might be dogged by questions about Egypt until November—possibly with some stronger evidence this time.