“I didn’t get a phone call or letter. It was just an email,” Lee Greenwood said.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday removed country music singer/songwriter Lee Greenwood from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Greenwood was first appointed by President George W Bush in 2008. Greenwood was reappointed to six-year terms by both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J Trump.
“You know, it’s a six-year appointment and I was appointed by George W. Bush 43,” Greenwood told Fox and Friends. “So I served under his term. Also, President Obama’s term. Of course, President Trump’s term.”
Greenwood’s song is regularly played at Trump campaign rallies.
“And then as you know he used my song “God Bless the USA,’ which is unilateral for me,” Greenwood said. “It’s meant for all people, not just for a particular political party.”
“So hearing now under the Biden administration and he’s cleaned house and finally he’s fired a patriot. I was quite shocked to tell you the truth,” Greenwood said. “I didn’t get a phone call or letter. It was just an email.”
To this point, Biden’s nominees for the National Endowment for the Arts are:
- Fiona Prine – President of Oh Boy Records.
- Kamilah Formbes – Executive Producer at the Apollo Theater; director of Broadway’s Soul Train.
- Jake Shimabukuro – Asian-American ukelele player.
- Ismael Ahmed – Co-founder of the Arab American National Museum of Dearborn, Michigan.
- Kinan Azmeh – Clarinetist and director of the Damascus Festival Chamber Players
- Christopher Morgan – Washington dance choreographer.
- Constance Williams – Businesswoman, politician and chair of the board of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel criticized Greenwood’s removal.
“Lee Greenwood wrote ‘God Bless The USA.’ Now Biden wants him canceled, too. So much for uniting the country,” McDaniel wrote on Twitter.
