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Morris Day & The Time and rapper Young MC pulled out of Trump’s Freedom 250 “Great American State Fair” lineup hours after being listed on the National Mall bill.
The Trump administration’s signature America 250 celebration is already losing acts. Morris Day and The Time and rapper Young MC both publicly withdrew from the Freedom 250 lineup on Wednesday, hours after the organizers named them as part of the first wave of performers for the National Mall festival.
NBC broke the back-and-forth. NBC News’s reporting on the lineup, the two withdrawals, and the organizers’ nonpartisan-nonprofit framing notes that Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership backed by President Donald Trump and that the “Great American State Fair” will run June 25 through July 10 on the National Mall.
Morris Day did not bury the lead. “Contrary to rumor, Morris Day & The Time will not be performing at the ‘Great American State Fair,'” the group posted as a graphic on social media, captioning it: “It’s a no for me.”
Young MC followed within hours. The rapper, best known for “Bust a Move,” posted that he had directed his agents to decline and that he was withdrawing publicly.
His framing was unambiguous. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” Young MC wrote. “I hope to perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”
The first-wave roster around them is eclectic. The New Republic’s writeup of the lineup and Young MC’s direct framing of the event as Trump-backed lists Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida, Martina McBride, The Commodores, Milli Vanilli, C+C Music Factory, and Bret Michaels as among the remaining names attached.
None of those acts has publicly withdrawn so far. The two performers who did walk are now the only ones on record framing the event as politically charged enough to skip.
Freedom 250 pushed back on the framing. Spokesperson Rachel Reisner told NBC the organization is a nonpartisan nonprofit “dedicated to uniting Americans around the nation’s 250th anniversary.”
The slate of festival programming is unusually broad. Beyond the music lineup, the event will feature a 110-foot Ferris wheel, state and territorial showcases, “CEO and innovator-led conversations and demonstrations,” and special screenings of National Treasure and its sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
The wider America 250 push is bigger than the Mall fair. The administration’s broader anniversary program also includes an Indycar street race around the National Mall and a planned Ultimate Fighting Championship card at the White House.
MSN’s aggregation of the artist pushback and the broader denial-of-involvement reports tracks how the wave of withdrawals began within hours of the first-wave announcement and is being framed in industry coverage as a likely first round rather than a final one.
The list of confirmed acts is, for the moment, in flux. With Day and Young MC out and the rest of the first wave still on the bill, the festival’s organizers have weeks to firm up the lineup before the June 25 gates.
The political subtext is doing the talking. For two artists, the math on appearing under a Trump-aligned banner during a midterm-year summer did not work.
