The internet let out a collective sob when Beyoncé’s publicist, Yvette Noel-Schure, shut down rumors that the 32-time Grammy winner would be performing at the Democratic National Convention.
“At home watching and anticipating the VP’s historic speech,” wrote Noel-Schure prior to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Nominee, taking the stage on Thursday. “Focus on the win and register to vote. Do not report rumors. FOCUS.”
Her post was seen as a direct reference to rampant speculation that the Renaissance star would appear at the four-day long event. Fueled by a TMZ report that Beyoncé would grace the stage on the final night of the DNC and X/Twitter verified accounts with large followings posting about the possible “surprise” (one account, @Angry_Staffer has since apologized), the rumor spread across nearly every social media platform and even had Democratic party organizers and Chicago government officials preparing for the possibility of Beyoncé’s arrival.
“It’s been crazy,” a person familiar with the matter told Rolling Stone earlier on Thursday. “People running the show and working here obviously will prepare for Beyoncépalooza… We just keep being told ‘I don’t know’ when this comes up,” added the source. “It has come up frequently.”
As the news that Bey would not be making an appearance finally sunk in, the internet and Beyhive reacted with a flurry of memes and posts emanating devastation.
“Has TMZ ever been this wrong before?” wrote TV writer Ben Siemon. “This is a total failure of American intelligence. A special counsel needs to be assigned.”
Meanwhile, Adam Smith, the vice president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, joked, “It’s time to subpoena TMZ.”
Beyoncé fan accounts also expressed their supreme disappointment, including Beyoncé Press., which took to X to post a list of Bey-less events.
While the rumors ultimately turned out to be an empty promise, the DNC was packed with star-studded appearances including performances by Stevie Wonder, John Legend, and Sheila E on Wednesday night, and a surprise appearance from Lil Jon for Georgia during the delegation roll call. To close out the convention, The Chicks delivered a rendition of the National Anthem, while Pink and her daughter Willow Sage sang a heartfelt performance of her song “What About Us.”
Bey herself has indicated her support for Harris, with her Lemonade track “Freedom” serving as the Harris-Walz campaign’s unofficial campaign song for several weeks. The vice president’s team also debuted a campaign ad with the track earlier this week.
Harris has been using “Freedom” — with Beyoncé’s permission — since the launch of her presidential campaign. At her first public appearance after securing Biden’s endorsement, Harris walked out to the podium while the song played.
Ahead of the 2020 Election, Beyoncé, a longtime Democrat, shared a photo of herself wearing a Biden-Harris face mask. “Come thru, Texas! #Vote,” she captioned the post. Throughout that year, Beyoncé supported her mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson, in her efforts to help voter protections.
And in 2016, Beyoncé and Jay-Z joined Hillary Clinton for a concert to mobilize voters in Ohio. Chance the Rapper, Big Sean, and J. Cole also appeared at that event.
“There was a time when a woman’s opinion did not matter. If you were Black, white, Mexican, Asian, Muslim, educated, poor or rich; if you were a woman, it did not matter,” Beyoncé said at the time. “Less than 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote. Look how far we’ve come from having no voice to being on the brink of making history again by electing the first woman president.”
And in 2012, Beyoncé shared a handwritten note on her website, expressing her support for President Barack Obama’s re-election. “Everyday we see your heart and character, inspiring all of us to give more of ourselves,” the singer wrote, before going on to call Obama “the leader to take us from where we are to where we need to be.”
War Is Peace: Trump’s Regime-Change Reversal
As American and Israeli rockets fly into Tehran, with the stated goal of regime change, anyone who bought into the self-evidently absurd idea of “Donald the Dove” ending America’s forever wars ought to be suffering from a bloody form of buyer’s remorse.
It was always bullshit. But that’s what the Trump team was selling hard. Take human ghoul Stephen Miller’s tweet days before the election: “Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace.”
The Trump team reads George Orwell’s 1984 like an owner’s manual and so of course “war is peace.” Their undermining of NATO and the dismantling of American alliances in favor of a “might makes right” foreign policy executed by a sycophantic kakistocracy is a guarantee of more war amid autocratic power grabs worldwide, with a side order of corrupt crony capitalism to profit from the chaos.
If you voted for Trump and believed him, this is on you. And that includes self-styled Palestinian peace activists who thought that Biden and Harris were the worst of all possible worlds and stayed home. We will no doubt see protests for the innocent lives lost in these strikes — but I’d have a lot more time for those folks if they were also seen protesting the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Iranian lives snuffed out by murderous mullahs in the last few months alone.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been despotic and dangerous from its inception. The Iranian people have been oppressed and denied basic freedoms for decades. But this is an extreme example of a war of choice. The American military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facility last year were justified because Iran cannot be trusted with a nuclear weapon. That is true. But the much trumpeted total obliteration of those facilities is apparently not true — or so goes the justification for this war. And don’t forget that it was Trump who pulled the U.S. out of an Obama-era deal to stop Iran from developing weapons — arguing absurdly that the imperfect anti-nuke deal needed to be blown up to stop Iran from developing a bomb. Iran’s subsequent progress toward a bomb then created the rationale toward these strikes. This is a self-inflicted state of emergency. Peace is war and war is peace.
Pity the willful dupes in Congress who deluded themselves into thinking that Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. They’ll probably rationalize that he would’ve been peaceful if he got the honor. Now it will be read as a cautionary tale for not sucking up. The chairman of the Board of Peace is now bored of peace. While Rand Paul remains admirably consistent, it’s Lindsey Graham who is pirouetting around the Senate floor while the Gimp Speaker Mike Johnson is unable to speak for the basic constitutional principles of separation of powers let alone authorization to go to war.
If you’re feeling shell-shocked trying to keep up with Operation Epstein Distraction, get ready for the inevitable next crisis — regime change without a plan for replacement. This is what the Trump administration did in Venezuela — kidnapping the socialist dictator Maduro but keeping his regime in place in exchange for crude oil access. The opposition is still in exile and its leader María Corina Machado gave her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump in exchange for exactly nothing.
One of the clear lessons of history is that if you don’t win the peace, you don’t win the war. The Saudis and their Sunni allies will back the U.S. and Iran because they hate the Shia Iranians (who, incidentally, are not Arabs), but beyond removing the Iranian regime, the plans for replacement and stabilization seem TBD — and with Trump’s inability to stay focused on anything beyond his immediate self-interest, solid plans are unlikely to emerge. Maybe a leader will come from the underground opposition; maybe it will be the Shah’s son, who has been living in the U.S. waiting for a restoration like many members of the diaspora. The upside is that Iran has a distinguished history and an accomplished Persian culture: The Islamists don’t represent the entirety of the people of Iran and never have.
But the path ahead will be messy at best. It will require concerted effort and civil commitment, not just an open call for private investment from Mar-a-Lago members. If the United States is now kidnapping and killing dictators without direct provocation, it establishes a dangerous precedent which will come back to bite us after demolishing our moral authority in the world.
It is the unexpected effects, the cascades of consequence where we cannot always plan ahead, that cause most responsible statesmen to try to keep the peace. But Trump has the carelessness of a rich-boy bully who can always buy or bluster his way out of trouble. He’s a con man who has found his ultimate mark in his followers, who fool themselves into thinking that a reflexive liar is the one man with the courage to tell the truth.
Perhaps the most prominent example is the vice president himself — a bright guy who not that long ago compared Trump to Hitler and a deadly narcotic but then convinced himself that careerism demanded an abrupt conversion. After all, he endorsed Trump less than two years ago with this very serious column headlined “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars,” explaining, “He has my support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.”