Trump Picked Live Nation’s Side Over Yours

By Tammy-Jo Pritchett · August 24, 2026

Opinion

Every single person in this country who has ever tried to buy a concert ticket knows the feeling. You find a ticket for $75, and by the time you click “checkout,” it’s $130 in fees, handling charges, facility fees, and a “convenience” fee that is convenient for absolutely nobody but Ticketmaster. You don’t need a law degree to know you’re being fleeced. You need a credit card and a pulse.

The Justice Department knew it too. They’d been building a case for over a decade. Last year, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, they finally sued to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, saying what every fan already knew: this company runs an illegal monopoly, and it’s been picking your pocket the whole time. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia signed on. The trial was set for March 2.

Then the president picked up the phone.

“Settle it,” Trump told a senior DOJ official. Days before trial. After months of negotiations that had gone nowhere because the government actually had a case and wanted to break up the giant.

Now here’s where I have some questions for the manager.

Attorney General Merrick Garland sued to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

Weeks before that call, Live Nation swapped in a new legal team for settlement talks. They came from Sullivan & Cromwell. That’s the firm representing Trump in his personal legal troubles. The lead lawyer, James McDonald, had almost no antitrust experience, but he’d been handling Trump’s New York appeals. Within months, Trump would nominate him to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor. You can’t make this up, and nobody needs to, because it’s all right there in the record.

Then there’s Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s private legal coordinator, who apparently took a special interest in getting this case resolved. DOJ officials couldn’t even figure out whether he was working for the president, for Live Nation, or for both. Bless their hearts for trying to sort that out, because I sure can’t.

On February 27, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino sat down with Trump in the Oval Office. The official reason was Kennedy Center bookings. Trump also wanted to know why the lawsuit hadn’t been settled yet. On March 5, Rapino was back, this time with Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington. Trump popped in to check on things. “How is this not settled yet?” he asked. By the end of that meeting, it was.

The deal let Live Nation keep Ticketmaster. No breakup. No structural change. Just a 15% cap on certain fees at certain venues, some competitor access rules, and a $280 million fund tied to state damages. The company that the DOJ had vowed to tear apart got to stay together, pay a fraction of what it’s extracted from fans over the years, and walk away.

More than 30 states, including Republican ones, took one look at that settlement and said no thank you. They brought in outside counsel and kept going to trial. And in April 2026, a federal jury found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had operated an illegal monopoly and overcharged fans. The states are now pushing for a breakup.

James McDonald led Live Nation's legal team and later became Manhattan federal prosecutor.

Let me put this in plain English. The career lawyers at the Justice Department had a real case. The states had a real case. A jury confirmed it was a real case. The only person who didn’t want the case to go forward was the one whose personal lawyers were sitting across the table from his own Justice Department.

The White House says the president “has not weaponized the Department of Justice against his political foes or used it to help his friends.” Todd Blanche, at his confirmation hearing to replace Bondi, said he wasn’t “directly part of discussions” but was “most certainly not saying they were not part of it.” That’s a sentence that took a lot of education to construct and says absolutely nothing.

I’m a populist, not a partisan. I don’t care whose team you’re on. When the biggest ticket monopoly in the country hires the president’s personal lawyers, sends its CEO to the Oval Office, and gets a sweetheart deal days before trial, that’s not draining the swamp. That’s building a luxury condo in it.

The states finished the job the federal government wouldn’t. Good for them. Somebody in this country still works for the people buying the tickets.

Sources

Editor’s note. It's a little too convenient how the President's office is now described as a neutral arbiter with a 'check on things' function, especially when the person who called the shots had already swapped in a legal team that was simultaneously handling his own personal legal troubles and coordinating with (W.K.)