Jon Bon Jovi, Reportedly The Target Of A Smear Campaign From Donald Trump In 2014, Will Campaign For Joe Biden
Jon Bon Jovi is reportedly hitting the campaign trail to support Joe Biden, and the decision to oppose Donald Trump may be personal for the rocker.
As The Hill reported, the singer will be joining the Democratic candidate on Saturday for a drive-in event in Pennsylvania. The campaign announced the appearance on Friday, part of a star-studded weekend for Biden that also includes appearances from some other high-profile figures like Shaquille O’Neal, Lizzo, and Cher.
The report noted that Bon Jovi also hit the trail to help Hillary Clinton in her 2016 bid, and going after Trump may be more than just politics for rocker. As GQ reported, when both men were in the running to purchase the Buffalo Bills following the death of founding owner Ralph Wilson in 2014, Trump took part in a secret effort to smear Bon Jovi.
A coalition of Bills backers calling itself “12th Man Thunder” grew vocally opposed to Bon Jovi’s bid, saying that his group of investors would have moved the franchise out of Buffalo and to Toronto. The effort was able to build up strong sentiment in the area against the group, even prompting some bars to ban his music.
In the end, neither Bon Jovi nor Trump was able to come up with a sufficient bid, and the franchise was sold to Terry and Kim Pegula. The campaign against Bon Jovi quietly went away, and GQ noted that it was not until years later that Trump’s involvement came to light.
“But what almost nobody knew — until now — is that the whole thing was pulled together by the then-future president of the United States,” the report noted. “In the spring of 2014, Trump hired veteran Republican operative and Buffalo resident Michael Caputo — a close associate of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Caputo had worked with Ollie North during the Reagan years and then helped boost the careers of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin as a political consultant in Russia — now he was enlisted to create a group that would scuttle Bon Jovi’s NFL chances.”
The appearance this weekend could be a major boost to Biden in a critical state. As The Inquisitr reported, a recent poll showed the former vice president winning in Pennsylvania, a state that Trump turned red in 2016 after having gone for Democratic candidates for nearly three decades. The state is expected to be a battleground again, with both candidates dedicating significant resources there.
