Yet another musical performer has dropped out of President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert series — Fabrice “Fab” Morvan, the surviving member of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, which shot to fame in the early 1980s before crashing down after they were outed for lip syncing.

The Freedom 250 concert plans collapsed shortly after they were announced. The lineup was viciously mocked because the featured performers resembled an ’80s and ’90s nostalgia tour with one-hit wonders, acts decades past their prime, and bands now without many or all of their original members. Besides Milli Vanilli’s Morvan, a promotional poster listed Martina McBride, Young MC, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, The Commodores (Lionel Ritchie left in the early 1980s; only one original band member remains), Morris Day & The Time, Flo Rida, and Bret Michaels.

With Trump eschewing the congressionally-created bipartisan “America 250” committee in favor of his own appointees on his “Freedom 250” committee to oversee the celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary, this led to criticism that the nation’s birthday was being politicized — and triggered a cascade of cancellations from the musicians.

Issuing statements saying they were definitely not performing were Morris Day and The Time, Young MC, The Commodores, Martina McBride, and Bret Michaels, with many saying they had not been properly informed about the nature of the event and did not wish to get entangled in something that was “political” and “divisive.”

Vanilla Ice posted a video on Tik Tok saying he would be performing and has stuck with that. Flo Rida has been mum on the controversy, neither declaring he was cancelling nor publicly confirming he would perform.

The concert kerfuffle seems to have ignited a decades-old feud within C+C Music Factory, a group that faced its own lip-syncing controversy with their 1990 hit, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” in which Marsha Wash’s powerhouse vocals provided the song’s catchy chorus but Zelma Davis was featured in the video as if she were singing those parts. The group’s name comes from the two co-founders, David Cole and Robert Clivillés (C and C). Cole died in 1995. In 2003, the group’s lead rapper Freedom Williams, acquired the federal trademark to use the group’s name; Clivillés has bitterly denounced this as Williams trying to “profit/steal and distort from our hard worked & earned history.”

Williams posted a rambling, profanity-laced seven-minute long video saying he didn’t “give a f*ck about Trump” but also saying no one could tell him what to do and he “might” still do the show. Clivillés wrote his own posts dunking on Williams for having “done his best to misuse our name, C&C Music Factory, which means Clivilles & Cole Music Factory.”

And then there’s Milli Vanilli.

Morvan, who was born in Paris, France, and his bandmate Rob Pilatus, who was born in Munich to an American serviceman and a German mother, were the charismatic frontmen for Milli Vanilli. The band was formed by producer Frank Farian in 1988 and they quickly found global success, selling platinum records and winning the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990. But later that year, Farian announced they had been lip syncing while others provided the vocals. Their Grammy was revoked and their label deleted their album from its catalog. Pilatus died after a drug and alcohol overdose in 1998 after several stints in rehab.

When the Freedom 250 concert series was announced, Morvan originally confirmed he would participate, but the other members of the band — including those who had provided the singing on Milli Vanilli’s albums — issued a statement calling themselves “the original/real vocalists” and announcing they “will NOT be performing” at the event.

Predictably, Trump was incensed at the cancellations and criticism of the concert series, writing several Truth Social posts bashing the musicians and vowing to take over the event and turn it into a Trump rally, if not cancel it outright.

On Monday evening, Morvan told CNN’s Laura Coates that he had changed his mind and was joining those who had dropped out, citing Trump’s comments as part of the reason.

Coates noted that as of Friday, Morvan had said he still intended to perform and asked him if that was “still the case tonight?”

“It’s not the case tonight,” replied Morvan, explaining that when the idea was first presented to his team, he liked the idea of performing for the “Great American State Fair” and the “cherry on top” was celebrating America’s 250th anniversary.

“I’ve learned a lot of lessons in America — hard lessons that I never forgot to this day,” said Morvan, saying he was “excited” because he “felt like it was a special moment…a full circle moment” to be able to come back and perform in the U.S.

What changed, Morvan explained, was when he saw that Young MC had pulled out, and that made him “worried” because it made him wonder what the rapper knew that he didn’t.

“And then one after the next, people started to leave,” Morvan said, but his team had been told “there’s nothing, there’s no political entanglement, there’s no political alignment, it’s just a free show for the people.”

Morvan said he wanted to perform “to unite the people, to bring people together, to have them walk down memory lane, celebrate life,” because some of the people who would attend the concert “were there when my music came out” and “it was a way to say, ‘hey, I’m still here, you’re still here, let’s have a good time together.'”

“That’s what it was for me,” he continued, “but throughout the week, it turned into a circus. And this is not what I signed up for. You know, I’m here to bring people together with music. I’m not into politics. So you hear it first here: I’m not attending [the] June 26th celebration.”

Coates asked Morvan about Trump’s comments calling the musicians “overpriced singers who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring” and asked for his reaction.

Morvan demurred, saying he did not want to “even try to enter this arena,” and just wanted to perform for “everyday people” with “love” and “to bring people together.”

Morvan added that he felt that he had “a very special story” and was able to be “an example” for “many” people, because “I fell, I stood back up, I reinvented myself, and I’ve moved forward.”

He had spent “many years” working to “change the narrative” and show people that he can sing, writing music, and touring through Europe, so he was not going to give a response to Trump. “So I’m not — I’m not even going to respond or give anything to that. I’ll step out. That’s what I’m going to do, because I know — it’s one of the reasons why I’m stepping out, because I didn’t sign for that, but now I see how it turns into, now I hear of the President of the United States talking about all the people who pulled out. Well, it is what it is. Life will go on, but I won’t be on that stage on June 26th.”

Morvan also declined to criticize Vanilla Ice for choosing to perform, calling it “not fair” and “not what we signed up for,” with people trying to have the musicians “pinned against another.”

“I’m very knowledgeable about politics, and I know how politics works,” said Morvan. “It’s a game of chess where everyone is trying to move, is trying to move its piece, and using others as pawns. I don’t want to be part of that. Which is why I’m stepping out, you know, in peace.”

“On your terms,” said Coates. “Fab Morvan. Thank you.”

Watch the video above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!