Donald Trump Hath Provoked the Ire of the Village People

Donald Trump has made a lot of enemies over his nearly eight decades on earth, and with good reason: He’s a sexual predator who ran a sham university and sham charity, separated migrant families to disastrous ends, implemented racist polices, and tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election because he couldn’t just admit he lost. But this week he earned a new and perhaps surprising enemy: the Village People.

Yes, we speak of the ’70s-era band best known for songs like “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man.” On Monday, Karen Willis, the band’s manager and the wife of its lead singer, sent Trump’s lawyer a cease and desist demanding that the ex-president stop using impersonators, after a video of a group of Village People look-alikes performing “Macho Man” at Mar-a-Lago went viral. “Since that time we have been inundated with social media posts about the imitation performance [which] many fans, and the general public as well, mistakenly believe to be that of the actual VILLAGE PEOPLE in violation of the Lanham Act,” Willis wrote. “Therefore, the performance has, and continues to cause public confusion as to why Village People would even engage in such a performance. We did not.” She added: “Though my husband has tolerated your client’s use of his Village People music, we cannot allow such use by him to cause public confusion as to endorsement.”

If Trump fails to “cease and desist any such further unauthorized use of the Village People image in association with the songs and his campaign (or in his personal capacity),” Willis said the group will sue to stop the use of not only “Village People trademarked image and trade dress, but of the music as well.”

In response, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina told TMZ—quite rudely!—“I will only deal with the attorney of the Village People, if they have one, not the wife of one of the members.” He added that “they [the members of the band] should be thankful that President Trump allowed them to get their name back in the press. I haven’t heard their name in decades. Glad to hear they are still around.”

In other Trump legal news, he’s still trying to get Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis booted from her criminal investigation into his attempt to overturn the election results in Georgia. Per The Washington Post: 

An Atlanta-area prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia asked a judge Monday to dismiss a motion by Trump’s attorneys seeking to throw out evidence gathered by a special-purpose grand jury, claiming the former president is trying to block an investigation before “any charges are filed.” The prosecution filing was in response to a March 20 motion by Trump’s Georgia-based legal team that sought to block the release of a final report issued in January by the special grand jury and “preclude the use of any evidence derived” from its investigation, claiming it was “conducted under an unconstitutional statute” and “through an illegal and unconstitutional process” that violated Trump’s due process rights. In a response filed late Monday afternoon, Fulton County district attorney Fani T. Willis (D) said the motion—which was joined last month by Cathy Latham, a Georgia Republican and alternate Trump elector who has been named as a target in the investigation—was “procedurally flawed and advance[d] arguments that lack merit.”

Willis wrote in the filing that Trump and Latham “are not content to follow the ordinary course of the law. They seek to ‘restrain’ a criminal investigation before any charges are filed or even sought; they ask that the judicial system place them above and apart from the common administration of the criminal law; and they do so by raising arguments for which they have no standing, or which they failed to timely join, or which they have already failed, or which have no basis in law at all.”