After Andrea Bocelli turns down inauguration, Donald Trump says he didn’t want him anyway

| 10:31 pm EST December 20, 2016
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Just one day after it was reported that singer Andrea Bocelli turned down Donald Trump’s invitation to perform at his inauguration, Trump and his campaign are now insisting that they actually dumped him. In what might be one of the strangest moves from the Trump camp to date, Donald and the gang are now attempting to do damage control by using a national television interview to claim that they didn’t lose the popular singer, because they didn’t want him to begin with.

The original report published by Page Six came from a source close to the singer who told the entertainment publication that “Bocelli said there was no way he’d take the gig.. he was getting too much heat and he said no.” But that story was apparently too embarrassing for Donald Trump, who sent his surrogate Thomas J. Barrack on national television just to claim that Trump was the one who told Bocelli not to bother showing up.

Apparently, Donald Trump and his team thought it was so important for the public to know who turned down whom in this back-and-forth with a pop singer, that they felt the need to give an extended interview about it on stock market channel CNBC.

Meanwhile, virtually no one is booked for Trump’s inauguration. The only supposedly confirmed name is America’s Got Talent runner up Jackie Evancho, and even she hasn’t publicly stated that she’s going to do it. The other names being tossed around are Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, but music publication Consequence of Sound says that even they’re not confirmed. Meanwhile, Garth Brooks has already turned it down. Perhaps Trump will end up claiming he didn’t really want Garth either.