Aretha Franklin Refused Trump’s Inauguration Invite Despite Performing At Hotel, Casinos [Report]

According to a report, singer Aretha Franklin deeply despised President Donald Trump, even refusing to perform at his inauguration though she was invited by his campaign for the 2017 event.

The POTUS, meanwhile, remembered the “Respect” artist fondly during Thursday’s press briefing, following her death.

“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” he told the reporters during the briefing. “She worked for me on numerous occasions. She was terrific — Aretha Franklin — on her passing.” It is important to note that Trump did not go into details about the kind of relationship he shared with Franklin or the nature of work she did for him in the past.

He did, however, pay a tribute to the late singer on Twitter: “The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, is dead. She was a great woman, with a wonderful gift from God, her voice. She will be missed!” he tweeted.

One source close to the Franklin told the Daily Beast that the singer was an avowed supporter of former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton and said that she despised everything that Trump stood for. She also allegedly added at one point that “no amount of money” could convince her to perform at the inauguration.

Apparently, even before the Trump team tried to book Franklin for a performance at the inauguration, she was already in talks to join Clinton on the campaign trail, and to perform a song written for her at the 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, the publication’s source said.

However, some contractual conflicts prevented her from performing at the DNC or appearing in other major 2016 election events. She did, however, perform briefly at least in one Clinton fundraiser.

"We would have loved for Ms. Franklin to perform at the 2016 Convention,” 2016 DNC CEO Leah Daughtry told The Daily Beast in an email. “After all, she’d performed at the 1992 Convention that nominated Bill Clinton and at both of his inaugurals. However, Ms. Franklin indicated that she simply wanted to enjoy the historic moment of Secretary Clinton’s nomination, particularly given her close and long-standing relationship with the Clintons.”

While the president received a lot of backlash on social media for alleging that he knew Franklin, as it turns out, Trump wasn’t entirely incorrect when he referred to Franklin as “someone who worked for him.”

In 1997, Franklin performed at a private event hosted by Trump to celebrate the grand opening of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York. A picture from the event, currently being circulated online, showed the two of them together standing side by side with smiles on their faces.

She performed at the Trump Castle Casino the next year, where she reportedly allowed employees to watch her rehearse, prior to the show. In 2000, Franklin also did a show at Trump Taj Mahal & Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Hence, it is wholly possible that the singer shared a good relationship with the president a couple of decades ago, which gradually soured as Trump prepared to run for the Oval Office later.