The idea is as charming as symbolic: a would-be tenor who would sing for the inauguration of a would-be President. According to the New York Post, Andrea Bocelli « is being personally approached by President-elect Donald Trump to perform at the inauguration ». Trump, obviously, did not find anybody else….

NYP journalists say, the Italian howler is performing at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Thursday and scheduled to be meeting with Trump on Friday. In 2010, the billionaire hosted an evening with Bocelli at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

But Trump, will not be aware of what we wrote years ago, before deciding to never again review a CD by Bocelli: ….wo Bocelli seine Stimme nicht kontrolliert, wo er schmiert, wo er stemmt, wo er absackt, wo die Stimme uneben wird, wo sie flackert, wo sie farblich ausrutscht, wo sie weiß wird, nicht zu reden von anderen technischen Fehlern in der Artikulierung, in der Atemtechnik, in der Phrasierung,  nicht zu reden auch von den weiten Strecken, wo diese Stimme völlig flach ist, mit einem Hang zum Larmoyieren, oder wo sie überanstrengt verzerrt und dem Schrei nahekommt. »

But what did Carl Bernstein (whose reporting in the 1970s with Bob Woodward for the Washington Post led to the Watergate scandal) say on CNN: « No president, including Richard Nixon, has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact in the way this President-elect does, » thus reproaching Trump to « live and thrive in a fact-free environment. »

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