Donald Trump dances with The Village People at a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration (Picture: AP)
Donald Trump performed his signature ‘dance’ with the Village People to close his final rally before he is inaugurated for a second time on Monday.
The iconic 1970s disco band came on stage at Washington’s Capital One Arena on Sunday to perform their hit YMCA after Trump ended his final speech.
The president-elect was seen pumping his fists and swaying side-to-side, appearing to sing along at times.
He has used the anthem to close nearly all of his campaign rallies, although his relationship with the Village People has been troubled at times.
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The band has showed mixed feelings towards Trump (Picture: AP)
YMCA was long considered an anthem of the LGBTQ+ community, nearly 90% of which voted against Trump, according to survey data.
Victor Willis, the group’s lead singer and only remaining original member, has faced a backlash for performing at Trump’s rallies and allowing him to use Village People music.
But he has flip-flopped on the issue, while expressing mixed feelings about the song’s status in LGBTQ+ culture.
The band’s most iconic song has been played countless times at Trump rallies (Picture: AP)
In 2023 Willis’ wife sent Trump a cease-and-desist order on behalf of the band demanding the president-elect stop using their music after he played ‘Macho Man’ at an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
‘Since 2020, I’ve received over a thousand complaints about President Elect Trump’s use of Y.M.C.A’, Willis previously said of the decision.
‘With that many complaints, I decided to ask the President Elect to stop using Y.M.C.A. because his use had become a nuisance to me.’
But Willis said he had a change of heart after learning of the sheer number of other artists blocking Trump from using their music.
Trump is set to be inaugurated for a second time today (Picture: AP)
‘As such, I simply didn’t have the heart to prevent his continued use of my song in the face of so many artists withdrawing his use of their material’,he said last month.
‘So I told my wife…to not withdraw the Trump campaign political use license.’
He also said performing for Trump was not an endorsement, and that the group wanted Kamala Harris to win.
‘We believe that music should be shared across political spectrum and not preserved for one political side,’ he added.
‘But here’s the sad truth, if our preferred candidate (Kamala Harris), had won, Village People would never have been invited to perform at her inauguration. She would have chosen the likes of John Legend and Beyonce, etc.’
Willis added in a statement last month: ‘There’s been a lot of talk, especially of late, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem.
‘As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life.’
‘However, I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem,’ he later said, adding that Village People will be ‘the first to speak out’ if Trump restricts gay rights.
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