When did rock and roll become so … scripted?
That, somehow, is the key takeaway from a semi-viral rant about the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump.
According to Fox News, alt-rock band Paramore made waves on Friday when lead singer Hayley Williams took some time out of the band’s set at iHeartRadio Music Festival to rebuke Trump.
The unhinged attack quickly spread on social media (following the tiresome formula of establishment hack + any Trump insult, no matter how factual = wall-to-wall coverage), with many Trump critics galvanizing Williams’ monologue.
And why shouldn’t they?
At its face, Williams’ anti-Trump screeching certainly had a lot of powerful imagery and verbiage.
“Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s playbook for controlling and punishing women, poor people, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community,” Williams said, per Fox. “It is time for all Americans to band together and to finally defeat the Trump agenda.”
The singer also described a hypothetical second Trump presidency as “a dictatorship,” before urging (screaming, really) viewers to go out and vote to stop it all.
Have you ever heard of Hayley Williams?
Yes: 2% (13 Votes)
No: 98% (791 Votes)
But while the video of Williams’ rant swiftly spread, so too did a video of the same rant, albeit from a different angle.
And that new angle showed that Williams’ performative screed wasn’t just demonstrably false (more on that later) but that it seemingly wasn’t from her heart, either:
Paramore’s Hayley Williams’ passionate, completely “spontaneous” rant about Donald Trump and Project 2025 was completely scripted. Here she is, reading the whole thing from a script that’s being held up by somebody else. pic.twitter.com/Ez98TxK1WL
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 22, 2024
The new video shows a stagehand holding up printed notes for Williams, as she yelled about whatever it is she yelled about.
Social media swiftly condemned this new video, accusing Williams of being a paid Democrat shill reading off of a script.
Williams responded to this new video and new allegations in a self-deleting Instagram story: “whoever you are, i typed out my speech and had a crew member hold it near the camera for me in case i got nervous bc what i had to say was important and i didn’t want to trip up in the moment. didn’t end up looking at it though… that’s because i prepared.
“finally, not only was i *not* paid to make the speech but we (paramore) didn’t get paid to play that radio fest either.”
Regardless of whether or not Williams was paid or rehearsed, the bigger problem with her rant is that its factually challenged.
The whole premise of her screeching was that Project 2025 — a conservative policy plan proffered by the Heritage Foundation — was bad for America and that Trump was the vehicle upon which that plan would arrive.
First: The “badness” or “goodness” of Project 2025 is subjective, but even on its face, there’s plenty of issues with Williams’ description of it.
The policy is a means to address government overreach, and nowhere does that really affect “poor people” or “people of color,” as buzzy as it is bring classism and racism into this.
Now, when it comes to the LGBT folks and “controlling and punishing women,” the closest Williams comes to hitting on those points is a brief snippet from the Project 2025 section on the Department of Health and Human Services.
But even Williams coming close to being accurate is still a gross misrepresentation of what the policy actually holds.
The policy mostly argues for the government to stop recognizing transgenderism (especially when it comes to surgeries on minors, as well as funding it with taxpayer money) and also wants the government to make abortion safer (i.e. banning dangerous chemical abortions, as well as mail order abortion access).
If you squint really hard after several shots of Democratic Kool-Aid, you can almost see what Williams is talking about there — but that’s a far, far cry from accurate.
Second, and perhaps more importantly: Trump and his team genuinely seem to despise Project 2025.
The only people connecting to Trump to Project 2025 are … Democrats and the left. Trump and his campaign certainly aren’t singing any praises for the Heritage Foundation’s policy proposals.
Looks, if Williams wants to claim she’s not a rehearsed, paid operative, fine. There’s no reason not to believe her.
But, peddling demonstrably false information based on “muh feelings”? That’s honestly more damning than being a paid actor.
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