By Daniel Dale, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump over the weekend called for the prosecution of music superstar Beyoncé – based on something that did not actually happen.
Trump claimed in a social media post that Beyoncé broke the law by supposedly getting paid $11 million for her endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris during an October 2024 event in Houston. But there is simply no basis for Trump’s claim that Beyoncé received an $11 million payment related to the Harris campaign, let alone for the endorsement in particular.
Federal campaign spending records show a $165,000 payment from the Harris campaign to Beyoncé’s production company, which the campaign listed as a “campaign event production” expense. A Harris campaign spokesperson told Deadline last year that they didn’t pay celebrity endorsers, but were required by law to cover the costs connected to their appearances.
Regardless of the merits of this particular $165,000 expenditure, it’s far from an $11 million one. Nobody has ever produced any evidence for the claim of an eight-figure endorsement payment to Beyoncé since the claim that it was “$10 million” began spreading last year among Trump supporters on social media. Fact-check websites FactCheck.org and PolitiFact looked into the “$10 million” claim during the campaign and did not find any basis for it.
The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request late Saturday for any evidence of Trump’s $11 million figure. When...
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