Jack Smith Attends Anti-Trump Concert

What happened

Former special counsel Jack Smith attended the Power to the People music festival in Maryland wearing a Bruce Springsteen tour shirt with the slogan “No Kings.” The festival was organized by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and presented as a music-and-community-action event ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Smith led federal investigations into Donald Trump, including Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election; those cases were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. Days earlier, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Smith of lying about an Atlanta Hawks game, though the messages involved Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball. President Trump called Smith a “Crooked Prosecutor” afterward; Smith has said his investigations were not politically motivated.

How each side covered it

From the left

Left-leaning outlets framed Smith as embraced by festivalgoers and musicians and read the shirts as pointed signals. Mediaite portrayed Smith as the festival’s standout figure, with Dave Grohl’s My Hero dedication presented as a tribute. Daily Beast treated Grohl’s Iowa Hawkeyes shirt as a wink at Schmitt’s botched questioning and Smith’s No Kings shirt as a pointed anti-Trump statement.

From the right

Right-leaning outlets treated the festival as political mobilization and Smith’s appearance as evidence of partisanship, not a neutral outing. The Gateway Pundit cast Smith as a partisan prosecutor and lingered on the performers’ warm treatment of him.