Kid Rock Joins President Trump to Target Ticket Reselling Scams

Kid Rock visited the White House today to continue his campaign against corruption in the ticketing industry, speaking out as President Trump signed an Executive Order addressing the subject.

You can see dozens of pictures of Trump and the star-spangled suit-wearing Rock below.

“Anyone who has bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years, no matter what, knows it is a conundrum,” Rock said of the bots and algorithms used to quickly snap up the best tickets for popular concerts, noting that both fans and artists are hurt by this extra layer of profit-taking. “[T]hey get all the good tickets to your favorite shows you want to go to, and then they are re-listed immediately sometimes for a 4[00], 500 percent markup.”

After Trump was elected for a second term last November, his longtime supporter Rock visited with then-incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi and left the meeting promising to “open a can of whoop ass on the bots, scalpers, venues, ticketing companies, managers and artists alike who rip off and deceive the public with the horse shit that has gone on for decades and only gotten worse.”

READ MORE: Why Do Venues Take Merch Cuts From Bands? – We Asked People Involved

The Executive Order Trump signed today is not a new law. It is simply, as the American Civil Liberties Union explains, “a written directive, signed by the president, that orders the government to take specific actions to ensure ‘the [existing] laws be faithfully executed.'”

As Deadline explains, the Executive Order simply directs the Federal Trade Commission to work with the Attorney General to make sure existing laws are enforced.

“Ultimately, I think this is a great first step,” Rock declared in the Oval Office. “I would love down the road if there’d be some legislation that could actually put a cap on the resale of tickets.”

The Biden administration had aggressively confronted Ticketmaster and Live Nation, also working to crack down on “hidden junk” fees related to concerts and other financial areas. “Surprise overdraft fees, excessive credit card late fees, hidden hotel booking fees” were among other practices that were targeted under Biden.

The U.S. Department of Justice, under Biden, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, alleging the company is operating as a monopoly with Ticketmaster.

Meanwhile, last week, the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted to strike down a rule capping most bank overdraft fees at $5.