After Reported ICE Raids at His Nashville Bar, Kid Rock Says He Supports Deportations ‘No Matter Where They Are’

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After reports last week of ICE raids at Kid Rock‘s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse in Nashville, the rocker took to social media to respond to the story and double down on his support for President Trump’s deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Responding to a Daily Mail US post on X about how his Nashville bar was the “next target for Trump’s sweeping ICE raids,” Rock started by taking issue with the story using his name for “click bait.”

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“Clearly I do not have anything to do with day to day operations at my Honky Tonk – but it’s good click bait, I get it,” Rock wrote on X. “That being said I 100% support getting illegal criminals out of our country no matter where they are. I also like President Trump want to speed up the process of getting GREAT immigrants into our country – LEGALLY! It’s that simple folks. But the below is not a juicy enough headline to get clicks and views.. in this day and age the truth often is not.”

Last week, The Tennessean reported that the New Orleans field office for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) had announced a weeklong operation that resulted in the arrest of nearly 200 immigrants in Nashville. On May 14, The Nashville Scene reported that the kitchens at Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk and other bars co-owned by Nashville businessman Steve Smith had closed early to avoid ICE raids.

Kid Rock has been one of Trump’s most vocal supporters over both of his terms as U.S. president, most recently joining him in the Oval Office on March 31 for the signing of an executive order that aims to crack down on scalpers who illegally obtain high-priced concert tickets for resale. During the signing, Rock thanked the president for the order, adding that it’s a first step in stopping bots that “get all the good tickets for your favorite shows they want to go to, and they relist them, sometimes for a 400 to 500% markup.”

Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse opened on Broadway in Nashville back in October 2018.

Bruce Springsteen Calls Out ‘Unfit President’ Trump Again, Says Elected Reps ‘Utterly Failed to Protect the American People’

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Bruce Springsteen resumed denouncing Donald Trump from the stage of his Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour Saturday night (May 17) in Manchester, England.

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The Los Angeles Times reports the Boss didn’t back down from his stance on Trump this weekend, after the U.S. president called Springsteen “highly overrated,” “dumb as a rock” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!)” in a post on Truth Social. The rant was Trump’s reaction to the musician calling out the president’s “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” at his tour opener earlier in the week.

“Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore,” Springsteen said to the crowd in a three-minute speech on Manchester’s Co-op Live stage on Saturday, as heard in a video posted by the L.A. Times.

“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said, echoing what he’d spoken about at his May 14 show. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”

Springsteen continued, “They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

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On a note of optimism that quoted novelist and civil rights activist James Baldwin, he added, “The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’”

On Friday, after Springsteen had shared similar thoughts from the stage, Trump responded on Truth Social, writing: “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country. Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

The “Born in the U.S.A.” singer, who’s performing across the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy from now through early July, endorsed Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Diddy Trial Day 3 Recap: Cassie Testimony Covers Threats Against Kid Cudi, $20M Settlement & More

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Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura wrapped up her direct testimony against the rap mogul on Wednesday (May 14), telling jurors that Combs threatened to blow up Kid Cudi’s car and revealing the dollar amount of a bombshell settlement that set off the sex-trafficking probe.

Ventura, an R&B singer who dated Combs on and off for 11 years, is the star witness in Combs’ criminal trial. She’s been on the witness stand since Tuesday (May 13), testifying that Combs physically abused her and forced her to have sex with male escorts during drug-fueled events known as “freak offs.”

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In her final day of direct testimony, Ventura reportedly told the jury that Combs became enraged when he discovered she was dating Cudi (Scott Mescudi) in 2011, according to The New York Times, which also reported that Ventura testified that Combs lunged at her with a wine opener and threatened to release freak off videos and hurt both her and Mescudi.

Ventura also said that Combs threatened to blow up Mescudi’s car, the Times reports, and that she soon broke things off with Mescudi out of fear.

“Too much danger, too much uncertainty of what could happen if we continued to see each other,” Ventura reportedly testified.

Ventura alleged in a November 2023 civil lawsuit that Mescudi’s car did, in fact, explode in his driveway a short while after Combs’ threats. Combs has not been officially linked to the incident.

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Ventura’s civil lawsuit, the first major public accusation against Combs, was also a key topic during her final day of direct testimony. Though Combs settled with Ventura after a single day, the case sparked the criminal probe that led to the current trial and a deluge of other civil sex abuse lawsuits against Combs.

The dollar amount of Ventura’s settlement was kept confidential and long unknown to the public. But according to the Times, Ventura revealed for the first time during her testimony Wednesday that the settlement amounted to $20 million.

Ventura is scheduled to undergo cross-examination by Combs’ lawyers starting Thursday (May 15). The trial could last up to two months total.

Nearly a Dozen Performers Planning to Skip ‘Les Misérables’ Kennedy Center Performance on Night Donald Trump Attending

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When Donald Trump finally visits the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center next month to attend his first-ever show at the beloved Washington, D.C. cultural institution he will be treated to a performance of the musical Les Misérables that will be missing a number of key players. According to CNN, at least 10-12 of the show’s performers are expected to skip the June 11 performance Trump will reportedly attend on the same night as a high-dollar fundraiser at the Center.

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CNN reported that the cast was given the option to not be on stage the night Trump is in the house, with both unnamed “major cast members and members of the ensemble” opting to take a night off in the midst of the Trump administration’s aggressive makeover of the venue. As part of his government-wide slash-and-burn effort to remake Washington his image, Trump installed himself as the chairman of the Kennedy Center with the help of a rebooted board made up entirely of his hand-picked appointees at the institution that has traditionally had a bipartisan mix of board members.

The Les Miz performance will coincide with the fundraiser featuring sponsorship levels selling for as much as $2 million according to ABC News, with the invitation noting that Trump will appear that night as “a special guest and friend of the Kennedy Center”; at press time it was not clear what the funds were being raised for as Trump is constitutionally barred from running for a third term. Trump played songs from the musical about the plight of the impoverished underclass during the French Revolution on stops of his 2016 presidential campaign, upsetting the co-creators of the stage musical, who requested that he stop blasting “Do You Hear the People Sing?” at his rallies.

In a statement to EW, Trump confidant and the Center’s new director, Richard Grenell, said of the reported boycott, “We haven’t heard this rumor. But the Kennedy Center will no longer fund intolerance. Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed. In fact, we think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire — and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience.”

The cast boycott is the latest in an unfolding culture war between the Trump administration and some artists who were slated to perform at the Kennedy Center, a number of whom canceled shows in the wake of the Trump takeover. Among those who pulled gigs or resigned from their leadership roles at the Kennedy Center in protest were: Ben Folds, Renee Fleming, Shonda Rhimes, Low Cut Connie, Rhiannon Giddens, Issa Rae, as well as a performance of the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Hamilton, the lauded show Trump subsequently criticized, saying “I never liked Hamilton very much.”

Trump raged against the programming at the Center in February in a Truth Social post in which he wrote, “No more drag show, or other anti-American propaganda — Only the best.” In another post, Trump said he wanted to make sure the Kennedy Center “runs properly. We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center. Some of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on.”