Did the song’s origin story matter? It did not. (Victor Willis, the group’s frontman and sole remaining original member, made headlines last month when he posted on social media that the song is “not really a gay anthem.”)
But of course this is how Mr. Trump views Music: as theme songs, fight songs, soundtracks for memories more than works of art. He leans toward anthems rinsed clean of meaning, so long as they’re memorably durable. He walked onstage to Lee Greenwood serenading him with “God Bless the U.S.A.,” as if accepting homecoming king coronation at the prom.
The pre-rally soundtrack, apart from the occasional contemporary intruder — Bruno Mars’s “Versace on the Floor,” The Weeknd’s “Starboy” — skewed four to five decades old. It was largely the sound of Studio 54 and its offshoots, wrung through layers of history and irony and post-history until nothing is left but the beat.
Most of the speakers were introduced with flickers of hard-rock guitar, as if to reassure (and energize) the majority white crowd. But the messages they delivered were in places more nuanced. Dana White, chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, reminded the crowd of Mr. Trump’s success with nonwhite voters, as did Mr. Trump himself in his speech, keen to paint MAGA as a multiracial movement.
-But the contradictions were never far from the surface. The Puerto Rican superstar Anuel AA embraced Mr. Trump, saying that he was onstage to speak “on behalf of all the Spanish community” and describing the backlash he received for supporting Mr. Trump. Just minutes later Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser, decried President Biden’s border policy and Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor, touted Facebook and McDonald’s doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
It was the ultimate in having it both ways — slyly embracing the spoils of American diversity while forcefully arguing against D.E.I. Using the optics and sonics of integration as a soft weapon against their own furthering. The purpose of the rally was intended to be clear, but the music suggested a far messier — and still unresolved — truth underneath.
