children’s rockThe bizarre multi-part saga with US military helicopters took another turn on Friday. The singer released a promotional video on the first date of his new concert tour for the America 250 celebrations, in which he appears leaving a private jet before traveling to the show in Dallas in a military helicopter with the Secretary of Defense. Pete Hegseth.
Rock’s helicopter spin began in late March, when a brief flyby of his Tennessee residence sparked a brief investigation into the airmen responsible. That investigation, which began at the nearby 101st Airborne Post at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and ended abruptly when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth barged in and exempted the pilots from all responsibility for his several-minute trip he fits into Rock’s home in the “Southern White House.” The two pilots were briefly suspended before Hegseth’s intervention. In April, Hegseth went one step further: Welcome to Rock aboard an AH-64 Apache helicopter during a visit to Virginia’s Fort Belvoir. While Rock’s repeated interactions with attack helicopters may have been considered a fleeting obsession, it appears to have had an actual end result: a roughly 115-second preview of Rock’s concert tour.
Fox News asked the singer earlier Friday about criticism that he is receiving government benefits. Hey responded hitting the “cackling crows” The view“before implying that he deserves the benefits because he has visited the troops, while the troops would not be interested in the large number of The view. “It’s just noise,” he added of the criticism.
Let’s put aside the frustration inherent in watching tax dollars wasted inflating a geriatric country pop star’s jingoistic publicity tour. The AH-64 Apaches only cost about $7,000 per hour to fly, which in the grand scheme of the US military budget is not so much a drop in the bucket as it is a grain of sand in the Sahara. Most notable is the friendly cronyism displayed between Kid Rock and Pete Hegseth. The Trump administration has always been desperate for cultural allies, and if Kid Rock is the best it can do, they may not be winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. But that doesn’t stop them from trying, and Kid Rock’s tour promotion could in some ways be a beacon for other artists – look at the access and favor we’ll grant you if you join the group’s line.
What is rare, however, is that any dominant cultural figure is actually convinced. For years now, Kid Rock has been as good as the Trump administration could get. Look, for example, at the duels in the halftime shows. Considered an alternative to the sacrilegious act of choosing a Puerto Rican for the actual Super Bowl, the “All American Halftime Show” sponsored by Rock’s Turning Point USA was a mediocre failure that failed to entertain even some of the most ardent supporters of an America First agenda. Nick Fuentes, the anti-Semitic host who has gained the attention of a generation of young conservatives, He was direct about it.: “I was watching that and I felt kind of depressed,” Fuentes said on his Rumble show. “If this is the best we have to offer, I think everyone will go for Latin futurism.”
And yet, here we are: flying the “American Badass” in helicopters so he can cheer up the crowds at his concerts. If Kid Rock is satisfied with this as the main cultural production of his later years, good for him. It’s pretty clear that the country – and every American who puts even a fraction of a cent in taxes into an attack helicopter flight budget – deserves better than this.
