LEAVE CARRIE ALONE! Trump’s Invite is a PsyOp!

Someone on a site I frequent listed many of the musicians who will have appeared as part of the Trump Inauguration activities and said that they deserved “the Carrie Underwood treatment.” That may or may not be so, but I can think of one such singer who doesn’t deserve it: Carrie Underwood herself.

This may seem like a small matter, but it isn’t. I think of the Trump Inaugural committee’s invitation to singer Carrie Underwood to give what is essentially a “command performance” as a PsyOp directed at independent women, anti-misogyny activists, and sincere Jimmy Carter-style Christians — and by vilifying Underwood, Trump’s opponents are playing right into it.

But she hasn’t. She’s accepting an honor to sing for the people without letting him own her. No embrace, no endorsement, no nothing — just a song sung for the people.

Why would we ever want to support Trump’s narrative? The counter-narrative is that Underwood is justly honored to receive this spot, last held by Lady Gaga, but that she refuses to get involved in partisan politics beyond the non-sectarian love of country, its bounty, and its people — and that she doesn’t feel that she owes Trump anything special as a result of receiving this honor. This has the virtue of apparently being true! She really is as unwilling to get involved in partisan politics as she says; but she is willing to celebrate her country patriotically in a trans-partisan way. (You can criticize her over not taking a stand at all — but that’s a pretty weak criticism, one that I’ll address more tartly below.)

The counter-narrative suggests that we can look past Trump and have our cultural favorites involved in exchanges directly with the people. That’s not only a positive thing, but it shows a way for us to get through the Trump era (at least until he self-destructs, as is likely.) Why would we not want to claim it, rather that abandoning Underwood when she doesn’t deserve it? That would make as as childishly obsessed with “owning our perceived opponents” as MAGA is.

Here’s a fact about the moment that begins today: We’re treading through a minefield of how we each will survive in a political arena with shock troops and snitches and Mafia-style shakedowns. This is unexpected and new. We need examples of how to simply get through out lives without engaging. If she is showing us how to do it, why would we demean her? For what, and to what end?

I may tune in today to watch her sing a song that traditionally unites us — if I don’t, it will probably because the Red Flag warnings are back across the Southland — and then turn of the TV, preferring to experience Trump’s “carnage” once it has had time to cool. As a sensitive young man once cried out in defense of Britney Spears — in words that have withstood the test of time much better than the snarking at her — LEAVE CARRIE ALONE!

A Possibly Poisoned Apple

Her critics are essentially accusing Underwood of being “co-opted” by Trump. Had she appeared at the Trump Victory Rally (like Snoop Dogg did), or if she were appearing at one of the parties or “balls” for Trump (like the Village People are doing), they might have a good point. But, so far as I know, she is only appearing in a very different role: at the Inauguration itself, singing “America the Beautiful.” That act does not “normalize” Trump; it simply marks a peaceful transition (which we believe is good) and standing for national unity (such as it is), which is one of the only things that might hold Trump back.

That’s how Underwood herself takes it. Here’s how a Business Insider piece quotes her:

Underwood is set to perform “America the Beautiful” at the inauguration ceremony, the Presidential Inaugural Committee said.

The “American Idol” alum has largely tried to stay out of politics throughout her career. “I feel like more people try to pin me places politically,” Underwood told The Guardian in 2019. “I try to stay far out of politics if possible, at least in public, because nobody wins. It’s crazy. Everybody tries to sum everything up and put a bow on it, like it’s black and white. And it’s not like that.”

That is not MAGA! It’s not even Bezos, Zuckerberg, Soon-Shiong, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and others who are kowtowing to and trimming their sails for him. She doesn’t run an empire, just her own career — to the extent that her contract with American Idol allows it. (Her loyalty, I suspect, is mostly to them.)Part of Trump’s political method (and it’s not like he invented it) is to grab some people from a group he wants to target and make them his own political property. He probably wouldn’t be able to identify Reggaeton if it climbed up his nose and laid eggs, but he still welcomed Reggaetón singer Nicky Jam (comically introducing him as female — to make the point that “Puerto Ricans are supporting Trump.”

Whatever you think is going on with the Inaugural Committee’s invitation and Underwood’s acceptance of it, the most sinister interpretation is that Trump is trying to show — implausibly, as will be seen — that she has “bent the knee” to him and is now his political property. With this invitation, he seems to be trying to position her as “that MAGA alternative to Taylor Swift” — but it isn’t working at all. She remains studiously non-partisan, resisting whatever casting he might be attempting.

An interesting question is why Trump’s people have given Underwood this (arguably poisoned) apple at all. She’s a really poor fit for MAGA! She is well-known for the song “Before He Cheats” — in which an enraged wife totally ruins her husband’s beloved oversized truck when she learns of his having cheated on her. So, that’s feminine activism, violent revenge (at least on property), and a critique of the plague of “masculinist” alpha male Hegseth-style if cheating are not really the theme you’d expect Trump and MAGA to appreciate in the first place, are they?

(As an aside: In researching this story, Underwood performed this song before Trump in 2017, I think in a duet with the formidably witty great Brad Paisley. She changed the last line from “before he cheats again” to “before he tweets again.” This is the kind of wickedly smart crack that tissue-skinned Trump never forgets or forgives — right, Barack Obama and Seth Meyers, who elicited the death stare from him at the White House Correspondents Dinner? — and maybe he’s doing this to settle that score. Or maybe he’s using her as an example of what he would have done to Taylor Swift if he could have.)

As a narcissistic sociopath — yeah, we’re back to the armchair diagnoses, might as well embrace it! — Trump wins when he satisfies his desire to sully something beloved and nice — proving that nobody can stop him. (Wasn’t that part of the point of his walking in on naked young teenage women to “inspect” them in his beauty pageant — that he was beyond anyone else’s control?) So we can well-suspect that he would love to be able to sully Underwood. Sadly for him, she ain’t playing that game.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Why do I think that Underwood is just a patriotic performer rather than MAGA — aside from the fact that we’d probably know it by now? Good question — and it has a good answer.

Here’s a list of artists performing at Trump Inaugural Events (mostly Balls): as you’ll see, one of them is not like the others:

Carrie Underwood will sing “America the Beautiful” — which praises America’s natural beauty and comity (“crown thy good with brotherhood” — nice even if mostly aspirational) — before Trump takes the oath of office, accompanied by the Armed Forces Chorus and the United States Naval Academy Glee Club.

Then opera singer Christopher Macchio, a Mar-a-Lago staple for a decade, will perform the national anthem at the end of the ceremony. Others include singers Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock, The Village People, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jason Aldean, Rascal Flatts, Parker McCollum, and Gavin DeGraw. Rappers Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, and Soulja Boy are also in the lineup at the inaugural balls and other events.

Now let’s cross-check against a list of singers who campaigned for or supported Trump in 2024:

• Billy Ray Cyrus (over the opposition of daughter Miley)
• Jason Aldean
• Kid Rock
• Lee Greenwood
• Others in this list

The rappers have made clear that they’re just taking the work for the payday. She hasn’t; money doesn’t seem to be the big issue. Honor does. And nothing indicates that Underwood has ever endorsed or campaigned for Trump.

Your Butt Is Not On the Line

Perhaps the most disgraceful thing about the slagging of Underwood is its insouciance.

It’s easy to criticize from an armchair, from where you will have no repercussions from an action. But let’s figure out the stakes for Underwood here — and how they differ from other major figures who have truckled under to Trump.

Jeff Bezos bought a business, the Washington Post, that, in a secular sense, might be thought of as the equivalent of a sacred trust. And he has been dismantling it for months now, out of which we may infer was not a wholesale change of mind about the media, but out of concern for what retaliation Trump may take against his main business, Amazon. When he bought Amazon, he put himself in this position — and he failed to follow through on his moral commitment.

Mark Zuckerberg built a business, Facebook, that could easily be destroyed by a hostile President combined with a compliant Congress and a supplicant Supreme Court. So he’s giving into threats and funneling protection money to this very Inaugural Committee.

Patrick Soon-Shiong also took up a sacred trust, that of the LA Times, but either never understood the responsibilities of journalism or was concerned about retaliation against his other lines of work, largely involving medical technologies. He has not only donated, but also made substantial adjustments in the editorial and opinion portions of his newspaper, to add MAGA figures and sand down the anti-Trump editorial voice, where it exists.

They all more or less invited the moral dilemmas they face. Compare that to what Underwood has done:

• Through hard work, developed her voice into a profound instrument
• Won a grueling network talent show, signing a contract giving the producers great control over her career
• Took a job as a judge in that enterprise, to which she has now returned

The difference is that she didn’t arrive at the doorstep of power with a whole lot of money and — more critically — she is not the one in charge. She is an extremely talented employee in a cutthroat industry.

And her employer is ABC — a network that just settled a lawsuit on terms favorable to Trump, to be nice.

She has done well to — despite what may be pressure from all sides but us activists — reach a place where she can accept an honor without becoming beholden to, or even glorifying, the incoming President. This is a skill that a lot of us will have to learn under these next four years of Mafia rule. But she has had to do it first — and publicly.

But it’s not being done to your satisfaction? You’d like to see her throw her career away just to satisfy your theory of what she should be required to do — while you have no demands on you to do anything as stark, with stakes anywhere as high?

Come on. If you’re so intent on continuing non-recognition of Trump, even at this late date, then you can be the self-immolation you want to see in this world. But demanding it from her is unreasonable.

People in oppressive systems do not generally succeed through frontal attacks. Success is more subtle and more circuitous — but it can be done. She’s showing you how. Watch her and learn. And don’t fall for the PsyOp.