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Actual facts refute Trump’s claims of inauguration singer sales boost

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 5 January 2017

As Donald Trump’s inauguration draws ever nearer, the saga of who will perform at the big after party continues. He has at least managed to pin down one person to sing for him now. However, his conviction that this is a fast track to fame and fortune for former ‘America’s Got Talent’ runner up Jackie Evancho is less assured.

You may remember that Trump was struggling to find performers for his welcome party late last year – most musicians who bothered to comment on his presidential bid having not done so positively. Even Pro-Trump performers seemed reluctant to put themselves forward.

Eventually, sixteen year old former ‘America’s Got Talent’ contestant Evancho was signed up to perform the national anthem at the event. She’s already performed for Barack Obama twice since shooting to fame on the show aged ten, so this is perhaps just another booking for her. But for the Trump administration it’s a chance to nudge away from total embarrassment.

Not that Donald Trump does embarrassment. Throughout his career in business he’s use blind self-confidence and misdirection to cover up his various mistakes and failures, painting a picture of a man who knows only success. The problem with that is that it relies on the fairly low level of public scrutiny afforded comical businessmen but less so leaders of the free world.

There was a time when Trump’s tweets were a thing to be laughed at and then ignored. Now they’re printed out and displayed in the Senate. Those that don’t take physical form are still pawed over for evidence of coherent policy, any morsel of sense, and outright falsehood.

The latter is generally the easier to find. For example, yesterday, he tweeted: “Jackie Evancho’s album sales have skyrocketed after announcing her inauguration performance. Some people just don’t understand the ‘movement'”.

Yeah, all you ‘some people’. You just don’t understand that there are millions of Trump supporters out there who are rushing out to buy Evancho’s albums now that she’s dared to stand up for the President-Elect. All those other artists who refused to play for him are missing out on a big boost for their music. You only need look at the numbers.

Oh, what, there are actual numbers? Yeah. In the week before Evancho was announced for the ceremony, her ‘Someday At Christmas’ album sold just 6000 copies, according to Billboard. The following week, that figure SKYROCKETED to 11,000. Then dropped back to 8000 the week after that. It peaked at number 93 in the Billboard charts, and currently sits at 134, making it the first of her six albums not to reach the US top 40. And it’s all thanks to Donald Trump.

I don’t know about you, but this all makes me look forward to the next four years. We left all the bad stuff back in 2016, after all.