Chrisette Michele Explains Performing at Trump’s Inauguration with ‘The Breakfast Club’

Chrisette Michele BFC

Chrisette Michele has been in the news after accepting Donald Trump’s invite to perform at his inauguration ball. Despite putting out an open letter speaking on her decision, Michele faced a lot of backlash on social media and throughout the news. Entertainment figures such as Spike Lee and Questlove spoke against the singer going forward with the performance, to which she responding with her new single “No Political Genius.”

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Speaking with Billboard, Chrisette revealed that not only her family disowned her but in the end she never got to meet Trump.

Originally I was supposed to perform directly after his first speech, and I had done that with Barack Obama before, so I was used to that kind of experience,” said the singer. “And the woman who organized the event came and told me, “Now you’re going to go first and he’s going to go after you.” I looked her in the eye and said, “My family has disowned me. If you decide to Google me, you’ll see that America is writing about me in their newspapers. I’m the black poster child for discord right now, and he’s not going to shake my hand?” So no, I didn’t get to meet him.”

The 34-year-old stopped by The Breakfast Club to open up on choosing to perform for Trump, her history performing for Obama, not meeting Trump at the inauguration ball, the heavy backlash, Spike Lee removing her song from his upcoming NetFlix series, recording “No Political Genius,” her thoughts of Trump after his first few days at the White House, the Women’s Day march, name calling and the attacks towards her on social media and more. Watch the 40-minute conversation below.