MAGA Festival With Kid Rock Canceled After No One Wanted to Go

Freedom Fest in Kentucky—headlined by MAGA artist Kid Rock—has been canceled after barely selling any VIP tickets.

The host blamed the cancellation on a lack of enthusiasm from his wealthiest friends, noting that he was only able to sell six VIP tickets (at $1,000 each).

“I am never ever, ever, ever, ever doing this event again,” former Kentucky GOP gubernatorial candidate and event host Eric Deters, who throws the event on his farm, said on Facebook Monday. “When I put together Patriot State Freedom Fest, I put it together with the game plan and the idea that I could pay for it with the VIP sales of $1,000 from these hundred people that I interact with on a regular basis that have money.”

The Freedom Fest began in 2022 and has drawn large crowds in the past, while featuring speakers like Donald Trump Jr., Candace Owens, and Eric Trump. But this year saw a massive drop in VIP ticket sales and general interest, possibly due to Trump’s horrendous approval rating, rising costs tied to the Iran war, or an oversaturation of MAGA events (like that barely watched Republican midterm convention). Either way, Deters is pissed, lashing out at people whom he apparently expected to attend.

“Out of all these people that have money that I interact with, who I do favors for all day long. They ask me for something, I never say no. I never said no to these people,” he said. “None of these people will ever, ever, ever get a favor from me again, ever. Not only will they never get a favor from me again, they do not have Bulldog immunity.” He also lashed out at the media for not adequately covering the event.

This was the last straw for Deters, who has said he’s done throwing the Freedom Fest from now on.

“I’m never gonna do this event. Somebody else can do such an event,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the people that were gonna attend. But I can tell you right now, I feel great relief that I ain’t gonna put this burden all by myself.”

President Donald Trump lashed out Monday against a federal judge, as more mainstream media outlets joined efforts to mount a press blackout on the White House.

In a lengthy tirade on Truth Social, Trump raged against District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, who was assigned the lawsuit brought by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico challenging the president’s decision to ban their reporters from the White House.

It appears Trump wasn’t thrilled with Kelly’s selection—even though he was the one who appointed the judge to the bench. Kelly previously ruled in favor of CNN’s Jim Acosta after the Trump administration tried to ban him from the White House.

Trump said he expected to appeal the decision. “With such a Crooked and Corrupt Press, how did I win in such a LANDSLIDE? It is because the Media has NO credibility, and that is a very bad thing for our Nation! Why should I have to give ‘access’ to such people? Perhaps Judge Kelly could explain that!” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the media protests only continued to grow. After major TV networks announced Monday morning they would boycott the White House (you may have seen some hilarious videos of Trump talking to himself with no audio recorded), The New York Times and Washington Post both released statements saying that they would not publish or distribute any images from the day’s events.

Despite Trump’s previous commitments to free speech, he is now pretending that freedom of the press is a privilege—not a right. And he appears to be promoting his own form of state-run media that will only print the lies he tells them. So much for capitalism, I guess.

All the while, Republican lawmakers, clearly terrified of getting on Trump’s bad side, remained eerily silent.

The White House is pushing its phone app in response to the broadcast media blackout, offering up a smattering of press releases, scheduling details, and MAGA talking points as a replacement for America’s biggest news outlets.

The app, simply named “The White House,” first appeared on Apple’s app store on March 27. But it suddenly reemerged Monday as the administration’s apparent redirection away from a collective display of solidarity taken by members of the White House press pool after Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House.

The push must have been effective. As of Monday afternoon, the app was charting at #11 in Apple’s news category—right behind The New York Times (X and Reddit took the top spots on the leaderboard, despite predominantly being social media platforms).

Yet the government software is far closer to propaganda than a bonafide news offering. The app’s front page highlighted Trump’s “historic deal with Greenland,” displaying a Truth Social post from Friday in which the president boasted that he had negotiated for the U.S. to develop and operate military bases on the island (it did not mention that this deal was originally set in place in 1951 by the Defense of Greenland agreement).

Below that, the app offered several banners displaying information pertaining to Trump’s campaign priorities—such as “grow the economy” and “lead the world in AI”—and achievements. However, the latter category was apparently so unquantifiable that the button to actually view such accomplishments took this reporter to the White House website, which first displayed a video of Trump swaying side to side on the stage of the American Business Forum before a scroll-down menu offered some statistics on deportations and, stunningly, a bullet point claiming that Trump had “ended the Israel-Hamas War.”

Other portions of the app presented advertisements for “TrumpTV” (described as “the essentials station”) and offered a compilation of social media feeds from the White House’s various accounts. It also suggested via a floating element that this reporter should “text President Trump.” That invitation opened up Messenger, where the link had created a pre-fabricated message for the White House’s text notification number. It read: “Greatest President Ever!”

The bottom of the app’s home page included a survey for inquiring minds. The question posed: “Should states that allowed noncitizens to register to vote—even through an alleged ‘software error’—face federal funding penalties?”

The options offered were: “Yes—states must be held accountable for election integrity failures;” “Yes—federal funding should be tied to election integrity compliance;” “No—software errors are accidents, not intentional misconduct;” “No—election administration is a state issue, not a federal funding matter;” and “Not sure—it depends on whether the error was negligent.” True to form for the rest of the administration, the poll did not offer any insight regarding its results.

The app’s recent recirculation was a sorry attempt by the president and his aides to keep the American public tuned in to his antics, hours after Trump was effectively muted during the unveiling of a new White House helipad because the press pool wasn’t there to mic him up.

The Republican Senate nominee in Iowa is trying to criticize the Iran war’s effect on ordinary people—without mentioning President Trump or her own voting history.

“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran. We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices,” Representative Ashley Hinson posted on X Monday.

Not surprisingly, Hinson’s solution doesn’t mention how Trump created the mess in the first place. Hinson also didn’t mention her own voting record: She has voted six times against House resolutions calling for Trump to end the war.

Instead, she suggests “suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, unleashing E-15 everywhere we can, reinstating the $1/gallon biodiesel tax credit, and creating a diesel relief program to help our farmers and truckers being crushed by the high costs.”

“These actions to lower costs are needed ASAP, and the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” Hinson said, adding that Iowa’s highway trust fund needed be “replenished, so that Iowans don’t suffer from crumbling roads and bridges while relief comes our way now.”

Fuel prices have skyrocketed in the last seven months, thanks to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, and, more recently, the takeover of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea by Houthi forces in Yemen. The average price of gasoline as of Monday was $4.4786 nationally and $4.3698 in Iowa, according to the American Automobile Association. Diesel fuel prices are even worse: $6.5107 nationally and $6.3157 in Iowa, a state with a large agricultural economy whose equipment depends on diesel.

Hinson is polling neck and neck with her Democratic opponent, state Representative Josh Turek, and is clearly worried that failing to acknowledge the war’s impact could hurt her in November. Trump won the state by 13 points in 2024, but Republicans and the president are polling lower and lower each day with the ongoing war only getting worse.

The Trump administration has agreed to pay at least $410 million to facilitate its so-called “third-country deportations” for immigrants.

As of the end of June, 31 countries, mostly in Latin America or Africa, have made deals to take immigrants expelled from the United States—despite having no connection to the deportees themselves, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The effort to secure the deals was led by Christian Ehrhardt, who was tapped to lead the Trump administration’s brand new Office of Remigration, a 15-person office named for the racist, far-right scheme to expel minorities from Europe. The deals were sought under the explicit orders of Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and resident White House ghoul.

For several months, Ehrhardt has rushed to lock in deals with numerous foreign leaders. “The messaging is not just that he is a deputy assistant secretary of state. He’s really part of the White House, so they roll out the red carpet,” a U.S. official familiar with his meetings told the Post.

As part of those deals, the Trump administration has agreed to pay $81 million directly to 13 foreign governments, which represents a sizable expansion of the sums being sent to authoritarian leaders. The agreements allow countries to specify what kinds of immigrants they will take—where they were originally from and their criminal background. For example, the government of Burundi accepted a $12 million agreement to take up to 250 African nationals who were non-violent criminals, while Cameroon accepted a $30 million to take up to 1,000 African nationals with a preference for non-violent criminals.

The secret deals were written without the typical statutory requirements to assure human rights safeguards. The State Department’s own human rights reports explicitly warn of violations in several of the countries, including Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea.

As part of those deals, the Trump administration has also promised to award $179 million to the International Organization for Migration and $124 million to the U.N. Refugee Agency for third-country deportations. For example, the Central African Republic agreed to accept 1,500 immigrants in exchange for an $85 million donation to the IOM. The highest contribution to this agency under the Biden administration was $14 million.

Immigration attorneys and advocates have argued that the third-country deportations are simply a loophole to bypass the United States’ own rules against sending immigrants back to their country of origin if they are at risk of persecution or torture there. In many cases, third countries simply send the immigrants back to their home countries anyway.

On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that these “refoulement” policies are unlawful. The Trump administration is expected to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.