Village People frontman Victor Willis is no longer speaking out against Donald Trump using the song "Y.M.C.A." at DT's rallies ... admitting he's benefiting greatly from the publicity.
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00:00You've probably seen the video and heard about this rally or actually it was a town hall meeting that Donald Trump had in Pennsylvania last night.
00:08Yeah.
00:09That had a very strange ending. About 40 minutes of him just standing on stage calling out to the DJ to play different songs and him doing some of his dances.
00:20Do the dance, Charles.
00:21I'm not doing the dance, but yes, one of them was, there were a lot of slow songs which was weird, but he did go to his old standby, his tried and true favorite, YMCA.
00:33He loves that song.
00:34Yeah, well the problem with YMCA every time he does it is that, and we've covered this for years, we've told you how Victor Willis, who was the lead singer, the cop from the Village People, has opposed this and has always said, we don't want him using that song, we don't support him.
00:49There was a big change today and it's almost like he's just saying, all right, we give up.
00:55We got this, I just broke the story on the website, we got a letter from Victor Willis who said he is no longer opposing this.
01:02What change?
01:03And really what it comes down to, I think, if you read between the lines, it's money.
01:07Well, listen, I mean, who can blame him right now?
01:10It's like an anthem at Trump rallies.
01:12Everyone's doing the YMCA.
01:14The song's probably bigger now than it has been in years.
01:17And he's a capitalist, man.
01:19All business is good business.
01:21And honestly, I know a lot of artists, they have problems with Trump using their music, but the Village People have nothing to gripe about because Trump went about this the right way.
01:32This is all done through a licensing agreement through the publishing company for the Village People.
01:38So even if the Village People were upset about it, there's nothing that they could really do about it.
01:43Because they've signed over the rights to their publishing company handles licensing, not the Village People themselves.
01:50Now, they could actually take a legal step and change that.
01:55But in this letter, Victor Willis said, I'm not going to do that because I realized exactly what Jacob just said, that the song does much better, sells better.
02:03In fact, he said, I don't – we haven't confirmed this independently, but he said at one point it went up to number two on one of the charts.
02:11No way.
02:12You're talking about a song that's obviously decades old.
02:14On their digital – yeah, a song, exactly, several decades old, did that well.
02:18I mean, it puts more money in his pocket.
02:20Yeah, and I think it comes down to, Charles, like how strongly do you – or how strongly do you oppose Trump and his policies?
02:26I think there's some artists that would say, I hate him and I don't care the amount of money.
02:29It's interesting you said that because in the letter, Victor said, I want to be very clear.
02:33I'm voting for Kamala Harris.
02:35I do not support Donald Trump as a candidate, but the money is right.
02:42So he's going to wave the white flag.
02:46He's done opposing that.
02:50He's done opposing that.