Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be loved when he stops “enabling Donald Trump,” singer Linda Ronstadt, a Kennedy Center honoree, said Saturday night.
“Ronstadt rose to the microphone a few feet away from the host’s table and looked straight ahead,” Variety reported from Washington, D.C., where the State Department held a reception for the Kennedy Center recipients.
Then she said: ‘I’d like to say to Mr. Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.’
Ronstadt made the comment after Pompeo, the official host of the event, quipped during the pre-dinner welcoming address: “As I travel the world, I wonder when will I be loved,” invoking the words of Ronstadt’s 1975 hit “When I Be Loved.”
The State Department dinner is part of the Honors weekend, an annual event hosted by the Kennedy Center.
The honorees this year include Earth, Wind & Fire, Sally Field, Sesame Street, and Michael Tilson Thomas and Ronstadt. Trump and first lady Melania Trump declined to attend the event for the third year in a row.
Ronstadt this summer told The Washington Post she hoped Trump wouldn’t be on site.
“I don’t want to be in the same room with him,” the liberal singer said. “I don’t think he would dare show his face. He doesn’t know anything about art. He knows about money.”
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