Latest news with #LeeGreenwood
Fox News
4 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Lee Greenwood says Gloria Gaynor deserves Kennedy Center honor, calls out Ana Navarro's plea to turn it down
Kennedy Center board member Lee Greenwood discusses President Donald Trump's celebration of the Kennedy Center honorees and opposition from liberal foes on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
Los Angeles Times
07-08-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: Trump taking oversight of the L.A. Olympics isn't a gold-medal idea
To the editor: Oh, great news. President Trump plans to lead the planning of the 2028 Olympics and is already threatening to have the National Guard and military on standby ('Trump names himself chair of L.A. Olympics task force, sees role for military during Games,' Aug. 5). What else does he have in mind? I foresee the U.S. team's uniforms being the usual red, white and blue with a MAGA overlay, and maybe some gold too. The opening ceremony, full of pomp and circumstance, could have Lee Greenwood and the Village People performing and maybe Sydney Sweeney riding a white horse in her American Eagle jeans. Trump will, of course, be carrying the final torch, as he's as fit as any of the athletes (haven't his doctors told you?). He will denounce any non-American athlete who wins a medal as rigged and fake news, maybe having Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain them. Janet Cerswell, Rancho Cucamonga .. To the editor: In the Aug. 6 Los Angeles Times, in addition to the headline noting that President Trump will oversee the L.A. Olympics, I saw several others that drew my attention to issues Trump is creating around the world. The Olympics is a time and place for unity through athletics. Athletes shouldn't feel fear over entering a country that seems to disrespect anyone who isn't a white American. I would vote, right now, to cancel the Olympics in Los Angeles. Tracy Dash, Oak Park .. To the editor: My family and I don't live in the city of Los Angeles, but we're all big fans. We live close and stop by often. That said, it seems to me that having the sitting president of the United States lead the planning for the L.A. Games is, quite honestly, not a good idea. I suppose that it's pretty much too late for the city to beg off, or to ask for a raincheck for four years down the road. I suspect that the residents have no say in this and, as an outsider, I can only offer our neighbors in L.A. some hastily whipped-up foreboding and honest sympathy. Doug Stokes, Duarte .. To the editor: Yikes! Buyers, contractors and workers, beware. When Trump takes over the Olympics, will he preside over a slide into bankruptcy, just as he has done with so many of his companies, and fail to pay everyone? Robert D. Chickering, Laguna Beach
Times
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Lee Greenwood: I'm Trump's court jester — and I do it for free
When Lee Greenwood was ushered into the Oval Office after President Trump's 2020 election defeat, he was told that his song God Bless the USA was going to play a big part in a future re-election campaign. 'He said, 'I'm gonna do this again. I will call upon you,'' Greenwood said. Unlike the many musicians who have distanced themselves from Trump, Greenwood, 82, has embraced his partnership with the president. Played at every Trump rally, God Bless the USA has become the definitive anthem for the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. In Washington bars frequented by White House staffers, the jukebox inevitably switches over to Greenwood's 1984 classic at a certain stage in the evening. The chorus goes: 'I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free/ And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me/ And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today/ 'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land/ God bless the USA.' Like the slogan 'Make America Great Again', the song was popularised by Ronald Reagan and used at Republican rallies in the 1980s. It has enjoyed periodic comebacks ever since, most notably in the aftermath of 9/11. Now it has become the soundtrack of Trump's presidency — and Greenwood, a regular guest at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, has returned to the top of the charts. The Times met Greenwood at a fairground in Pennsylvania last week, where an audience composed largely of farmers had gathered to watch him perform next to a shed containing a selection of prize-winning goats. Speaking before the show in his air-conditioned tour bus, Greenwood, who has an estimated net worth of up to $10 million, revealed that all his work for Trump is done 'gratis' — although he sells Trump-endorsed 'God Bless the USA' Bibles to fans for $59.99, or $1,000 for a copy signed by the president. This year alone he has sung at Trump's inauguration, Trump's birthday parade in Washington on the 250th anniversary of the US army and Trump's recent tour of the Gulf, where Greenwood sang for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Qatar. 'I didn't serve in the military,' says Greenwood, who began his career on the Las Vegas strip as a jobbing musician and still regards himself as an outsider in Nashville, his adopted home. 'I think this is my way of serving.' His relationship with Trump goes back to the 1990s. Kimberly Payne, Greenwood's wife and a former Miss Tennessee, introduced her husband to Trump, a New York property developer at the time, after meeting him through his ownership of the Miss Universe franchise. When Trump moved into politics, that personal friendship became a double act. The pair have mastered a routine that delights Trump's crowds. Likening his role to that of a 'court jester', Greenwood says: 'I play my song, they open the curtain and he makes a dramatic entrance. 'Whenever I worked with Reagan or [George] Bush, the president spoke, [then] I sang. Trump uses my song as an entrance, like a ta-da.' Although he prefers to identify as a conservative Christian rather than a Republican, Greenwood has embraced Maga politics. At one point, he inadvertently admits that Trump 'lost the election' in 2020, before pausing as he realises he has just contradicted the president's assertion the election was stolen. 'Um … I have my own view about that, but I don't think I'll go on record of saying whether he did or didn't,' he clarifies. There were plenty of Americans left disillusioned by the events of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people. However, Greenwood believes that Black Lives Matters protesters engineered the chaos to discredit Trump by jumping out of buses into the crowd and antagonising his supporters. 'I think Black Lives Matter had a place to play in that,' he says. 'It was not the people in the march. When our crowd was incited, 'hey, let's go into Capitol', I believe a lot of them were drawn into that. It's a shame. You know what happens with a lynch mob. People get riled up.' Trump's supporters have promoted a number of conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, accusing the FBI, Antifa demonstrators and now, it appears, BLM of staging the insurrection. A 161-page report produced by a congressional committee in 2022 found Trump himself responsible for inciting the riot. Many of Trump's most devout Maga loyalists believe in such conspiracy theories. Last July's assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania — not too far from the Fayette County Fair — played into suspicions of a deep state trying to bring him down. The lyrics of God Bless the USA, urging believers to 'stand up' and 'defend' the country, echo the iconic image of Trump taken after the assassination attempt, with his fist raised and blood pouring from his ear. When Trump returned to Butler, after an apparent act of providence, Greenwood performed alongside him. 'They tried to weaken him financially and then they tried to kill him,' says Greenwood. 'And I say 'they'. I'm not sure how deep that goes because I have no proof.' Greenwood's song is brimming with nostalgia for America's past. Its resurgence as the soundtrack of Maga typifies a yearning for a return to American patriotism and traditional values. But what are Americans searching for in their past? 'We have a serious immigration problem,' Greenwood says. 'When I was growing up, there was no doubt who was an American. We fought for the same thing.' But what about the strand of American patriotism that embraces immigration? The spirit that is included in the Statue of Liberty, with its inscription beseeching the Old World to 'give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'? 'The difference is assimilation,' Greenwood says. 'We assume those people who came across Ellis Island in the early days wanted to be an American. We have too many people here that don't want to be an American, that don't want to fit into our society.' He adds: 'I don't think we're going to have a civil war again. But we do need to redefine who we are. And I believe stopping illegal immigration is the reason.' Does he ever worry that he will go down in history as a one-hit wonder? 'I think it's amazing that a farmer from California could have had enough talent and the gift of music to be able to write something that moved my country,' he says.
Newsweek
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
What Happened to Democrats' Patriotism?
"And I'm proud to be an American," goes the refrain of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," an intensely patriotic song the country singer has frequently performed at political rallies and campaign events for President Donald J. Trump. As Americans marked the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence last weekend, polling data on patriotism highlighted an alarming trend. While almost all Republicans say they are "extremely" or "very patriotic," scarcely more than one-third of Democrats now share that sentiment. It was not always this way. In 2001, according to Gallup, America's two major political parties were roughly even in national pride, with 90 percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats identifying as "extremely" or "very patriotic." Those figures diverged only marginally over the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In 2015, after six years under Obama, Republicans were still registering high levels of patriotism, at 90 percent, while Democratic patriotism had only slightly receded, to 80 percent, with no intervening year seeing the latter fall below the 74 percent recorded in 2007. The last decade, however, has seen patriotism among Democrats plummet while the Republican figure has remained virtually unchanged. In the course of just one year, from 2015 to 2016, the share of highly patriotic Democrats fell to a then-historic low of 68 percent. That figure further declined to 60 percent in 2018 before dropping to just 42 percent in 2020. Recovering the White House for four years after Trump's first term did little to encourage Democrats' enthusiasm for their country. By 2022, the midpoint of Joe Biden's time in office, extreme or very high levels of Democratic patriotism had anemically recovered to just 52 percent. The Republicans, meanwhile, dipped only slightly that year, to 84 percent, their lowest number on record. Attendees wave the US National Flag after US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris spoke on the last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois,... Attendees wave the US National Flag after US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris spoke on the last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 22, 2024. More ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP/Getty Images According to Gallup's most recent survey, taken in June, the Republicans have vaulted back to near unanimity, at 92 percent, while the Democrats have hit a new low, with just 36 percent saying they have a high level of patriotism. A less nuanced poll of registered voters taken in June by the Republican firm National Research, Inc., which merely asked if the respondents considered themselves to be "patriots," found that 91 percent of Republicans answered affirmatively to that description compared to only 50 percent of Democrats. An alternative opinion question in the same survey found roughly equivalent figures among "conservatives" and "liberals," at 87 and 51 percent, respectively. Notably, the Democratic patriotism dive began around 2015, as diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory began to ooze from small academic circles through virtually the entire educational system. These ideologies carried criticism of the national past, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, free speech, perceived structural inequalities, and "whiteness" into many American institutions. Patriotic feelings have sharply declined among the younger generations who were most exposed to that unhappy development. Regardless of party affiliation, according to Gallup, only 41 percent of Gen Z and 58 percent of millennial respondents claim to be extremely or very patriotic, compared to 71 percent of Generation X, 75 percent of Baby Boomers, and 83 percent of the "Greatest Generation." For a political party even to be perceived as unpatriotic can be lethal in American politics. Gallup finds that 58 percent of all Americans still subscribe to high levels of patriotism. That figure, too, is a historic low, clearly dragged down by Democrats who express little love for their country. Democratic politicos are scrambling to explain away the results or find palliative measures. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (D) said of Gallup's results: "in the greatest country in the world, that's just wrong. I'm unapologetically grateful for our nation and the American Way of Life—today, and always." As Biden put it in his first public address after Kamala Harris ingloriously lost to Trump, "you can't love your country only when you win." The numbers show that, win or lose, Democrats don't love it very much at all. With the progressive faction now ascendant in Democratic politics it is hard to see that these sentiments will change—or make them more electable. Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The problem with ‘Are you proud to be an American?'
Predictably, Advertisement I'll take a pass on jumping into the left-vs.-right ideological scuffle ( Advertisement The wording of that question has always struck me as awkward and ambiguous. It confuses very different feelings — gratitude, approval, and identity — by jumbling them into a single, emotionally charged term. The phrase 'proud to be an American' has been a staple of America's civic vocabulary for decades. It was famously enshrined in Lee Greenwood's 1984 anthem, ' Gallup has been asking the question in essentially the same form for over two decades, making it a useful barometer of national sentiment. And yet, looked at closely, the question is clumsy. Respondents aren't being asked about their pride in America, or America's achievements, or America's values. The question Gallup keeps polling is about people's pride in being American. But what does it mean to be proud of something you didn't choose or achieve? Advertisement Most Americans were born in this country, which is no more of an accomplishment than being born in February. The case is different for naturalized immigrants, who become Americans by choice, often devoting much time, effort, and commitment to do so. For them, 'being an American' is indeed an achievement for which they're entitled to feel proud. That is because pride, to be meaningful, requires agency: You are entitled to be proud of the things you have done, the learning you have acquired, the contributions you have made — but not of mere accidents of birth you had no say in. What makes far more sense, in this context, is to ask about gratitude. Americans can and should feel grateful for the freedoms, opportunities, and protections afforded to them by virtue of living in this country. Similarly, Americans can and should express admiration for what their country stands for, or what it has achieved, without reducing that feeling to shallow self-congratulation for being born here. When Gallup, The question functions as a proxy for loyalty and belonging, for emotional identification with the nation. Respondents aren't being asked about status but about solidarity. What is being measured is a kind of affective nationalism: Do you feel positively about being an American? Do you embrace that identity in an era when many feel disillusioned or alienated from their government and fellow citizens? The question is slippery. It allows critics to pounce on a decline in 'pride' as evidence of disloyalty or lack of patriotism. And it invites supporters to wave the flag without reckoning seriously with what pride in being an American should actually entail. To be sure, there are Advertisement Uncritical pride is not the mark of a healthy patriotism. The British writer G.K. Chesterton warned against just such confusion when he observed: '' The German-born The decline in 'pride to be an American' doesn't necessarily mean Americans are growing less patriotic. More likely it reflects frustration with the nation's faults and with the political leadership that enables them. As the plunge in pride among Democrats indicates, it is clearly bound up with partisan antipathy for the Trump administration. Advertisement It is also generational: Young Americans of every partisan stripe — Democratic, Republican, and independent — express pride in being American at lower rates than their older counterparts. Does that mean they don't care about their country? Or does it signal a deeper moral engagement with what they believe America ought to be? It would be more illuminating — and less inflammatory — if pollsters distinguished between these different sentiments. Instead of asking simply, 'Are you proud to be an American?', why not ask: Are you grateful to be an American? Are you proud of what America stands for? Are you proud of what America has done in the past year? Do you feel attached to or alienated from American identity? Each of those questions measures something real and distinct — gratitude for circumstances, embrace of values, approval of conduct, and emotional belonging. Lumping them all into a single catchphrase encourages people to speak in clichés rather than grapple candidly with the complexity of their feelings about their country. The simple question has persisted over time in part because it's familiar and easy to track and in part because Americans have been conditioned to respond to it in a certain way. The Greenwood song is still sung, the flag still waved, and the phrase 'proud to be an American' still used as a kind of civic password, even when many who say it harbor deep reservations about the country's direction. And for those who refuse to say it are framed in the headlines as outsiders ungrateful or disloyal, even when their criticism is rooted in love of country and a desire to see it live up to its promise. Advertisement Patriotism ought to be more than a reflexive cheer or a performative protest. We can express pride in our ideals without ignoring the ways we have betrayed them. We can love our country without idolizing it, and criticize America without abandoning it. What if we stopped asking people whether they're proud to be Americans, and started asking instead what they're doing to ensure America remains a country worthy of pride. This is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
