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Aretha Franklin told her friends 'no amount of money' could make her sing at Trump's inauguration, claims book

The president wanted the Queen of Soul to perform at his 2017 inauguration but he didn't know that she thought he was 'despicable'
UPDATED FEB 22, 2020
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

A new book about the Trump White House revealed that for his 2017 inauguration, President Donald Trump pushed for the late singer Aretha Franklin to perform. According to reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng's book 'Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington,' this was never going to happen. 

Markay and Suebsaeng write, "In the days after election night, President-elect Trump ordered Tom Barrack, his longtime confidant who was chairing the Presidential Inaugural Committee, to reach out to the music icon or her people to see if she would sing at his inaugural concert."

"Trump, who knew Franklin leaned liberal and had sung for Obama, had for years claimed the legendary soul artist was his dear ‘friend’ and desired it to be pitched to her as a chance to bridge the ideological chasm and to help heal the country following an emotional, unsparing general election," they wrote.

"What Franklin never got the chance to tell Trump to his face is that around the time she had learned of Team Trump's overtures, she privately stressed to friends that 'no amount of money' could make the singer, a committed Hillary Clinton supporter, perform at a Trump inauguration. More bluntly in the year and a half, before she passed away, Aretha Franklin would repeatedly call Donald Trump 'despicable' and, even more pointedly, a huge 'piece of s***,'" the authors wrote.
 
On August 13, 2018, news broke that the Queen of Soul was "ailing". PEOPLE later confirmed from sources that the singer and civil rights activist was "gravely ill" and her passing was "imminent". On August 16, 2018, it was announced that the icon had passed after suffering from "advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type".

Part of the book synopsis reads: "Two of Washington's most meddlesome reporters take readers on a deep dive into the murky underworld of President Trump's Washington, dishing the hilarious and frightening dirt on the charlatans, conspiracy theorists, ideologues, and run-of-the-mill con artists who have infected the highest echelons of American political power." 

After the death of the singer, Trump had continued to claim that he knew her "well" and that the late singer had "worked for (him) on numerous occasions". Franklin's friends stood up for her saying that she would never deal with the politician. One of those who spoke up was Rev. Al Sharpton. Speaking at her funeral, he said, "When word went out that Ms. Franklin passed, Trump said, ‘She used to work for me. No, she used to perform for you. She worked for us."

"You know, the other Sunday on my show, I misspelled 'Respect', and a lot of y'all corrected me. Now, I want y'all to help me correct President Trump to help teach him what it means," he said.

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