Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump had a really, really, really bad habit of using songs at his rallies without bothering to check to see if the artists or their representatives thought it was okay. It began from the moment he entered the race, when he rode down the escalator to the strains of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”–without bothering to ask Young first. Since then, he’s been busted in the chops for swiping songs from R.E.M., Aerosmith, Adele, Elton John, and Luciano Pavarotti, among others.
So it’s only fitting that on the night of his inauguration, Trump is slated to play a song written by someone who, in all likelihood, would have had nothing to do with him. Namely, Frank Sinatra. On Wednesday night, The Washington Examiner reported that when Donald and Melania Trump have their first dance as the First Couple, it will be to the strains of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ 1969 hit, “My Way.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6gBw-tK82E
On paper, it seems fitting. After all, Sinatra, like Trump, was a party switcher; he was a Democrat for most of his life before becoming a Republican in 1972 to support Richard Nixon’s second run for the White House. But regardless of party, Sinatra was a staunch supporter of the civil rights movement for most of his life. He led the effort to desegregate Nevada hotels and casinos, and even went as far as to refuse to play at hotels that turned away blacks as guests or performers. Contrast that with Trump, whose campaign was a smorgasbord of racist and anti-Semitic dog whistles.
If anyone knows where Ol’ Blue Eyes might have stood had he known his song was being played at Trump’s inauguration, it’s his daughter, Nancy Sinatra. Earlier in the month, she tweeted that she had a very good idea how her father would have voted had he been alive–and it wouldn’t have been for Trump.
https://twitter.com/NancySinatra/status/817870229300617216
And when she got wind that one of her dad’s hits was going to be played at Trump’s inaugural, she couldn’t resist trolling the Troll-In-Chief.
https://twitter.com/NancySinatra/status/821921330471677952
The first line?
“And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.”
Ouch.
Nancy says that she only meant it as a joke, and never intended it as a “warning” to the Donald, as CNN suggested.
https://twitter.com/NancySinatra/status/822212248881876993
Still, it’s hard not to imagine that Nancy must have been looking for her old go-go boots when she fired off her original tweet. Speaking of which…
So far, Trump hasn’t responded. Apparently he knows that, joke or not, Nancy walked all over him here.
(featured image courtesy MusicFirst Coalition, available under a Creative Commons BY-NC license)
