The country song has a jaunty, folksy cadence and offers the false narrative that the Democrats stole the election. It has also gone viral on social media, turning the ditty by a 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Pensacola, Fla., into a protest anthem for President Trump’s supporters.
“When I went to sleep Trump had the lead,” begins the song, which is called “Pallets Full of Ballots.” It continues: “They found pallets full of ballots at 3 a.m. All the way from Georgia to Michigan.”
The song, which erroneously suggests that Democrats stuffed “pallets full of ballots” to try and swing the vote, underlines how President Trump’s unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud are infiltrating popular culture.
By Thursday, a video of the song had logged more than 650,000 views on YouTube, a week after it was posted. It was also released on Spotify. While YouTube affixed a label to the video of the song noting that “The AP has called the Presidential race for Joe Biden,” a Google search led to a copy of the song on another YouTube account where no such warning was visible.
According to YouTube, the video does not violate its guidelines since “expressing views on the outcome of a current election or process of counting votes is allowed” under the company’s policies.
Austin Forman, the singer-songwriter, also posted the song on his Facebook page, where he received a warning from the company that his page was at risk of being unpublished because of “continued community standards violations.” He responded by telling his followers to follow him on Parler, a social networking app where legions of Mr. Trump’s supporters have migrated after being fact-checked on Facebook and Twitter. But he said Facebook had not removed his page.
Mr. Forman wrote on Facebook that he would be performing the song at a planned protest by Mr. Trump’s supporters on Saturday in Washington, dubbed by some in the pro-Trump camp as the “Million MAGA March.”
The singer has become an instant darling among some ardent Trump supporters, with one suggesting on his Facebook page that he should sing at Mr. Trump’s inauguration, despite Mr. Trump having lost the election. Another fan, Bill Lawrence, wrote on his website: “Woody Guthrie has come back as a Republican.”
The election has spilled over into the cultural realm with comedians, singers and voters on both sides of the ideological divide turning to patriotic songs, parody lyrics and protest music to express themselves.
Rolling Stone observed that revelers outside the White House on Saturday had turned to Steam’s 1969 hit “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” to bid farewell to Mr. Trump while the streaming of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” had increased since the election.
The comedian Tim Heidecker wrote a mocking song, “Rudy at the 4 Seasons,” about the recent news conference by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. That event, where Mr. Giuliani alleged voter fraud, was held outside a Philadelphia landscaping business located near an adult bookstore and a crematory.
But while Mr. Forman characterized his song as “comic relief,” he nevertheless presented the fiction that the election was fraudulent as if it were a fact.
In an interview, Mr. Forman, a father of four, said he had been inspired to write the song because he believed the election had been fraudulent. “I consider myself a strong patriot and there are a lot people in the country who believe the election was stolen from us,” he said.
Asked to provide evidence of fraud, he said: “The evidence will come out. Our president is taking care of that. What happened is crazy to me: Trump was winning all the swing states and legal votes should be counted.”
Mr. Forman, who sings in bars in Florida, said he wanted to make people smile during a difficult period and had been heartened by the fact that even Democrats told him the song had made them laugh. He said he had written another song that went viral, inspired by the Netflix series “Tiger King.” That song has an expletive-laced misogynistic title.
He added that, if the legal process examining the vote was exhausted, he would accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.
Speaking on “The Howie Carr Show” on Newsmax, the right-wing media app, Mr. Forman said a friend had come up with the title for his latest song. Mr. Forman said he hoped to write another version of the song about Mr. Trump’s victory. He omitted that Mr. Biden had won both the vote in the Electoral College and the popular vote in the election.
Be the first to comment