Watch Barbra Streisand Mock Trump With 'Send in the Clowns' Cover
had a message for the president during her headlining performance at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The singer took the opportunity to unveil a rendition of “Send in the Clowns” targeted squarely at Trump.
During the show, which counted Hillary and Bill Clinton and U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler as attendees, Streisand commented that Trump has been blocking New York State from releasing his tax returns. “Jerry, you know what I’m talking about,” she added, referring to Nadler.
Her new rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” which Streisand originally covered for her The Broadway Album in 1985,” opens with the line, “He says he’s rich/ Maybe he’s poor/ ‘Til he reveals his returns/ Who can be sure?/ Who is this clown?” Her version continues: “Something’s amiss/ I don’t approve/ Now that’s he’s running the free world where can we move?/ Maybe a town/ Just who is this clown?” She also calls him a fraudulent twit” in another verse.
Streisand continued to make her point after the song, when a photo of the White House covered in a circus tent appeared on the stage’s screen. The image then shifted to one of Trump on his Time magazine 2016 Person of the Year cover with a red nose under the words “Clown of the Year.” “That’s for real,” Streisand noted, gesturing at the screen.
“You know, that was meant to be a funny song,” she added. “But what’s going on just isn’t very funny, because it would take me all night long to recite 11,000 lies. You know what I mean? But there’s a line by Oscar Wilde that kind of describes this person. The line is: ‘He’s a man who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.’”