Topline
A song inspired by the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has reached No. 1 on the iTunes chart, been promoted by Fox News and had its music video posted by the GOP presidential candidate—though Trump’s recent claim it’s the top song “across all charts” isn’t true.
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024.
Key Facts
“Fighter” by Jon Kahn is No. 1 on iTunes top downloads chart, which ranks songs based on their sales from the iTunes store, but does not appear on Apple Music’s Top 100 chart or Spotify’s Top 50 chart for Friday, which rank popular songs based on their number of streams.
The song, a ballad with lyrics like “I’ve been down/Counted out/Smiling through the taste of blood” and “No one can say that I’m a run and hider/I was born to be a do or die-er,” has become iTunes top-downloaded song this week since it released Wednesday and is at the top of the pop chart.
Kahn, a singer/songwriter and an occasional author for the right-wing news website Breitbart, wrote the song with Nashville hitmaker Chris Wallin and told Breitbart he has “always wondered how Trump gets out of bed every day given everything that’s been thrown at him and his family.”
He said he wrote the song about Trump’s resilience through “two impeachments, deplatforming from social media, the entire democrat media complex fighting in concert to destroy him, unprecedented lawfare and now two assassination attempts.”
Trump on Friday posted the music video for the song—filled with clips of himself at rallies, including footage of him being shot in the ear at a campaign event in July—and wrote: “This is now the Number One song, across all charts, about me. Such an unexpected honor!”
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Crucial Quote
“If he can take a bullet, I can write a song,” Kahn told Breitbart.
Big Number
269,000. That’s how many YouTube views the official music video for “Fighter” had on YouTube as of noon Friday.
Surprising Fact
On Thursday evening, when “Fighter” first started picking up steam, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld told his audience the song was “all over the place” and encouraged them to “listen to it. Make it stay No. 1.”
Key Background
One of Trump’s talking points that has resonated the most with his supporters over the last year is the idea he’s a victim of political persecution. Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed he did not commit the crimes that led to his indictments or conviction, but that he was a victim of unfair Democratic mistreatment; that he did not incite the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, leading to his impeachment by the House of Representatives; that he was removed from Twitter in 2021 under a scheme to block free speech, not because of behavior that violated company rules; and that his two assassination attempts are to be blamed on the “rhetoric” of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. When Trump was indicted on dozens of felony counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, he made the unfounded claim that Biden played a direct role in the charges against him and called it “the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country.” When he was convicted in a hush money case that found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records, Trump called the verdict “rigged” and his supporters slammed it as an example of corruption in the court system. The song “Fighter” has a similar tone, suggesting Trump is repeatedly forced to “get back up” after being unfairly attacked (“I get back up/That’s what I do/I didn’t soldier on this far just to lose/ So take your shot/ Is that all you got?”)
