Ed Sheeran Gaza Controversy, AI Fears and Piddington Immigration Protest - Off the Fence

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Konstantin Kisin (0:30)

Hello everybody and welcome to this week's Off the Fence with me, Konstantin Kisin, and of course, my TRIGGERnometry co-host, Francis Foster, our friends, Winston Marshall of The Winston Marshall Show and Tom Slater from SPIKE. Welcome guys.

We're going to get straight into it. This week, our three stories are going to be the Ed Sheeran opening acts dropping out over the Free Palestine thing. We will talk about that. We will talk, of course, about the warnings from various AI insiders that AI is going to kill us all and, you know, more relaxed. Piddington in England has voted to leave the United Kingdom in a referendum because they don't want migrants in a camp right around the corner. Let's get straight into our first story, which is, of course, Ed Sheeran and his opening act dropping out after free Palestine controversy. Francis Foster, take it away.

Francis Foster (1:28)

Well, this, Konstantin, is very much a story that has captured the cultural zeitgeist. I'll lead you through everything that's actually happened.

This involves an artist or an artist called Macklemore, who is an Irish rap artist who was booked to open for Ed Sheeran. He went on Ed Sheeran's show to open, and he did his act, but he also delivered a speech about Palestine, the Palestinian struggle, in which he said the words free Palestine. Now, the New York Post alleges that there was then a call with Robert Kraft, in which it was asked him not to do that. Now, this is an allegation. We don't know if it's true or not. He then went on a couple of days later and then proceeded to double down on this. And talked about the Columbia students describing them as their actions as heroic for standing up for unoppressed people. Now, what subsequently happened is there was a conversation between Robert Kraft and Ed Sheeran in which Robert Kraft, by the way, is the owner of the New England Patriots and one of the arenas that Ed Sheeran was booked to perform in and said that this could not carry on. And not only would he not be welcome to perform at Robert Kraft's arena, there were numerous other owners of arenas that Ed Sheeran was booked to perform in that would subsequently pull out of the tour and refuse to host Ed Sheeran's show. At which point, Ed, having really, I would say no choice, then said to Macklemore that he could not perform at any more of his shows. Now, something very interesting happened at this point because every single one of Ed Sheeran's support acts have subsequently dropped out.

Macklemore then said he's going to donate all of the earnings that he's gonna get from the tour, roughly around a million dollars to Palestinian causes. And Robert Kraft, in a beautiful piece of one-upmanship, has doubled that and said that he's going to give two million to Palestinian causes. So Ed Sheeran, who for those of you who don't know, is a fairly milk toast, middle of the road, pop act, is now caught in one of the culture war stories of this year. And it's very interesting to see where this will go.

Konstantin Kisin (4:06)

Wait Francis, just to check one thing, did you say Robert Kraft is going to give two million to Palestinian causes or Israeli causes?

Francis Foster (4:14)

Palestinian causes, as in Palestinian charities.

Konstantin Kisin (4:18)

So having canceled the shows of the Free Palestine thing, he's nonetheless going to give more money to Palestinian charities?

Francis Foster (4:27)

Yeah, to help people who've been affected by the war.

Konstantin Kisin (4:31)

Okay, I see. Cool, cool, cool. Winston, you are obviously our music industry insider, but can I just say one thing before we get into it? Just one thing, there's obviously the free speech and all of the principal stuff, but just from the three of us, I think have opened for people and had people open for us at various life.

If you are opening for Ed Sheeran, I actually had to look this up because I couldn't believe it. Francis and I were talking about this story and I was like, well, there's no way he would have said this at Ed Sheeran's concert. He might have done a speech at a different concert of his own, and then that's become the controversy. I looked it up with Venice AI. No, he did this political thing at Ed Sheeran's concert, at the concert of the guy for whom he's opening. And it's like, what are you doing?