Justin Bieber reportedly turned down a $5 million offer to perform at the GOP convention


Former child star Justin Bieber reportedly rejected an offer of $5 million to perform at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this month. The pitch came from GOP donors who presumably wanted to match the saturation of Hollywood stars at the Democratic National Convention the following week.
Though an event coordinator suggested Bieber's appearance would be "not political," TMZ reports that Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun, a Hillary Clinton backer, believed it would be "100 percent political."
Though the offer would have been Bieber's largest single payday ever, perhaps it's a good thing the deal never materialized given the GOP's choice of Donald Trump for its presidential nominee. After all, Bieber is an immigrant from Canada, and if he can be taken as a representative figure, it really seems like "they're not sending their best," as Trump himself would say.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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