Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ted-cruz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ted Cruz</a> (R-TX) mocked Vice President Kamala Harris this week over her failed presidential campaign, saying that it was like the Fyre Festival.
Cruz made the remarks during the most recent episode of his &#8220;Verdict&#8221; podcast with co-host Ben Ferguson while talking about the disastrous campaign that Harris ran, including how her campaign ended up $20 million in debt.
&#8220;Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns, and it points out that Trump&#8217;s campaign spent roughly $488 million, and Kamala spent more than a billion,&#8221; Cruz said. &#8220;So, she outspent Trump more than two-to-one, and Kamala campaign ended up $20 million in debt.&#8221;
The Fyre Festival is the name of a hyped festival that was supposed to take place in 2017 that ended up falling so far below what was expected that the term &#8220;Frye Festival&#8221; is now a meme for something that is an epic disaster.
&#8220;Where did that money go? Well, one of the things that it went to is they paid many of [the] &#8216;celebrities&#8217; who supported her,&#8221; Cruz noted, adding that they were given &#8220;significant sums&#8221; of money.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
&#8220;Look, I&#8217;m a fiscal conservative, damn it,&#8221; Cruz said. &#8220;If you want to be there and you believe in saving the country, stand up and save the country, and if not, get the hell out.&#8221;
&#8220;Like, what is it with these lefties who, ironically, they want to put socialists in office who make it impossible for people to earn a living, and yet they&#8217;re such capitalists that they&#8217;re like, show me the money to do it. I mean, there is an intense hypocrisy on this,&#8221; he added.
LISTEN:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
After she spent millions bribing celebrities to endorse her, Kamala Harris&#8217;s campaign is millions of dollars in debt.
This is going to deeply demoralize Democrat donors. It is outrageous that donors gave their hard-earned cash to enrich celebrities.<a href="https://t.co/Et7wlOPde5">https://t.co/Et7wlOPde5</a> <a href="https://t.co/UhImgKVSAl">pic.twitter.com/UhImgKVSAl</a>
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1856791694710116702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 13, 2024</a></blockquote>

2024 Republican National Convention

Ted Cruz: ‘Kamala Harris Ran The Fyre Festival Of Campaigns’

2024 Election

Elections

Fyre Festival

Kamala Harris

Politics

Ted Cruz

Billy McFarland is giving his infamous <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fyre-festival" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fyre Festival</a> a second try after disastrous results on the first go-round.
The 31-year-old <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/crime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convicted felon</a> and entrepreneur announced on YouTube that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/music" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fyre Festival II</a> tickets were on sale, with ticket prices ranging from $499 to $7,999. 
“It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here and it really all started during the seventh-month stint in solitary confinement,&#8221;  McFarland said in the video update. &#8220;I wrote out this 50-page plan of how I would take this overall interest and demand and fire and how I would take my ability to bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Announcing FYRE Festival II" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/URtBbKzgeO4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
McFarland said he “spoke to people as far away as in the Middle East and South America and ultimately we decided that Fyre Festival II is coming back to the Caribbean.”
“We are targeting Fyre Festival II for the end of next year. In the meantime, we’ll be doing pop-ups and events across the world. Guys, this is your chance to get in. This is everything we’ve been working towards. Let’s f***ing go.”
The original Fyre Festival, which occurred in 2017, made headlines for months and became the topic of multiple documentaries. It was pitched as a luxury music festival and touted by social media influencers, including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski, who failed to disclose they were being paid to promote it. 
Fyre Festival started falling apart before it began but McFarland insisted on proceeding anyway. The event had major issues with security, food, accommodations, venue setup, employees, medical services, and the promised performers who began canceling their appearances. The disaster situation was all well documented on social media, which created even more of an uproar.
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McFarland pled guilty in 2018 to two counts of wire fraud and faced up to 20 years in prison. He was sentenced to six years as part of a plea deal but was released early after serving four years and time in solitary confinement. McFarland was also ordered to pay $26 million to help reimburse people.
The entrepreneur announced his intention to put on a second Fyre Festival earlier this year. In a recent X update, McFarland claims the latest ticket drop has “sold out.”
“Since 2016 FYRE has been the most talked about festival in the world. We now saw this convert to one of the highest priced GA pre-sales in the industry,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/pyrtbilly/status/1693976033249141204?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>. 
“FYRE is about people from the (sic) around the world coming together to pull off the impossible. This time we have incredible support. I’ll be doing what I love while working with the best logistical and infrastructure partners. In addition, all ticket sale revenue will be held in escrow until the final date is announced.”
“We look forward to surprising the world alongside our partners as we build FYRE and FYRE Festival II into the island adventure of a lifetime,” McFarland concluded.

Billy McFarland

Billy McFarland Announces ‘Fyre Festival II’ Tickets On Sale After First Event Landed Him In Prison

Billy McFarland Announces 'Fyre Festival II' Tickets On Sale After First Event Landed Him In Prison

Entertainment

Music

World

The latest Netflix sensation comes courtesy of Shonda Rhimes. The well-known producer took the story of a wannabe socialite who went to jail for scamming hundreds of thousands of dollars and turned it into a limited series that somehow glamorized Anna (Delvey) Sorokin’s story. 
Sorokin pretended to be a German heiress named Anna Delvey to trick banks, businesses, and friends into giving her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise, not to mention hotel stays. She was convicted of multiple counts of larceny and theft in 2019.
It’s hard to tell what’s true and what isn’t while watching the Netflix series “Inventing Anna.” That’s by design as the tagline for the project is, “This whole story is completely true, except for all the parts that are totally made up.”
There’s at least one point of the saga that isn’t made up, however. Fans got a chuckle out of Sorokin spending time staying with Billy McFarland as he was planning the now infamous disaster music event Fyre Festival. Considering the fact that Sorokin is a convicted con artist, it would make perfect sense that she was hanging with someone like McFarland.
But Sorokin allegedly scammed McFarland before Fyre Festival ever happened. According to <a href="https://pagesix.com/2018/07/23/socialite-swindler-may-have-bilked-fyre-festival-fraudster/">Page Six</a>, the faux German heiress “moved into the Wooster Street headquarters of McFarland’s dubious credit card company Magnises for four months.”
“Anna knew people on Billy’s team,” an insider told the publication. “She just asked to stay for a few days … then she wouldn’t leave.”
“She hung out and went to the parties,” the source continued. “She was there, just sitting there — all the time.”
“She had Balenciaga bags and clothes everywhere,” other sources told Page Six. “The company wound up moving into a townhouse. That’s the only way they got her out! She had been there for four months!”
This was familiar behavior for Sorokin. She was also accused of moving into Manhattan’s 11 Howard boutique hotel for many months while dodging the bill. “Inventing Anna” showed the native Russian insisting that a wire transfer was coming for payment, but that money never arrived.
Meanwhile, McFarland went on to achieve notoriety for staging Fyre Festival and pulling a very similar scam to what Sorokin did. The hustler used fake documents to trick investors into sinking more than $26 million into the ill-fated festival, which featured attendees being forced to sleep in FEMA tents with terrible food and no concert ever taking place. The con led to McFarland getting charged with wire fraud and sentenced to six years in prison. 
The series “Inventing Anna” and its creator have been criticized for glamorizing Sorokin’s crimes and treating her as a “feminist icon,” blaming her crimes and theft on a capitalist society.
“Shonda seems to think that deep down the deranged Sorokin wasn’t a fabulist who lied with abandon and cruelly used everyone she met at all. No! She was a modern-day Gloria Steinem who was held back by our inhospitable world of horrible men,” a <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/18/inventing-anna-treats-criminal-anna-delvey-like-a-feminist-icon/">reviewer</a> from the New York Post write. “A kind of secret shopper whose fibs shined a light on the real injustices — capitalism and the patriarchy. Deutschland’s own Joan of Arc.”
“Inventing Anna” is currently streaming on Netflix.
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Delvey and McFarland

‘Then She Wouldn’t Leave’: Anna Delvey Allegedly Scammed Billy McFarland Before His Fyre Festival Debacle

Netflix

Music fans are excited yet apprehensive for the next big music event. “When We Were Young” is a tour of all the old-school emo bands from earlier in the 2000s that millennials listened to during their teenage angst years. The show boasts headliners including Paramore and My Chemical Romance alongside alternative rock favorites such as Alkaline Trio, AFI, Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Avril Lavigne, Dashboard Confessional, and The Used, just to name a few.
Thirty-somethings are eagerly looking forward to scoring tickets to the October 22 show, which is going down at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. But there are quite a few music fans who are looking with trepidation at the event and even calling it a potential “Fyre Festival 2.0.”
One TikTok user voiced her <a href="https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/when-we-were-young-festival-fyre/">concerns</a>.
 &#8220;There are 65 bands, there&#8217;s 12 hours in the festival day, and there&#8217;s three stages,&#8221; she said. &#8220;If you do the math, it works out to about 33 minutes and change for each band to play. It just seems like so much can go wrong with this.&#8221;
The TikTok video has more than 280,000 views. The user also mentioned how logistically, it can take up to an hour to break down an entire set and get ready for the following band.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve been to my fair share of festivals and it just seems like so much can go wrong with this,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I would be so ready to throw my money at this if it was a two-day festival. But I just can&#8217;t justify spending close to $300 on something that seems like it&#8217;s going to be Fyre Fest 2.0.&#8221;
And then there’s the fact that Live Nation is hosting the concert, which will be the first major concert since Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival left 10 fans dead and hundreds injured. According to Newsweek, Live Nation Entertainment was the event promoter for Astroworld and was also allegedly responsible for planning, staffing, and communicating with local agencies for the disastrous Houston event.
The company is facing multiple lawsuits and an investigation over what part they played in evaluating potential safety hazards. But despite the ongoing litigation, the company promises they have a plan for the “When We Were Young” event.
&#8220;The safety of fans, artists and staff is thoroughly planned for among event organizers and in coordination with local authorities,&#8221; a spokesperson told <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/when-we-were-young-festival-organizers-live-nation-astroworld-comparisons-1671193">Newsweek</a>. “We have seen a lot of excitement around this festival and we look forward to putting on an incredible event for all of the fans this October. We encourage fans to check the festival website and socials for all of the latest updates.&#8221;
Some fans suggested Live Nation had even more nefarious purposes in planning the show. &#8220;This is 100%  Live Nation tapping into millennial nostalgia to pay their Astroworld stampede legal fees,&#8221; one person tweeted. &#8220;Don&#8217;t be suckers, we&#8217;ll live to enjoy our oldies longer if we just stay the f*** home.&#8221;
The official Twitter account for the popular Chicago-based punk festival Riot Fest even questioned the event. “One day is not a festival, it’s just a long a** concert,” they <a href="https://twitter.com/RiotFest/status/1483508827534286849">wrote</a>.
Pre-sale tickets are available beginning January 21 and start at $225 per person.

Photo of AUDIENCE

Fans Think ‘When We Were Young’ Emo Concert Could Be A Disaster Like ‘Astroworld,’ Call It ‘Fyre Festival 2.0’

Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and other celebrities slated to take part in the “Fyre Festival” were asked to return payments during bankruptcy proceedings.
Four years ago, fraudster Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule drew thousands of attendees — many of them Millennials — to a remote island in the Caribbean by <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/18/how-fyre-festivals-organizer-scammed-investors-out-of-26-million.html">promising</a> a luxury music festival “where the tropical sun shines all day, and our celebrations ignite the night.” 
Tickets ranged between $1,200 and $100,000. Attendees were promised stays in luxury villas and dining that included “local seafood, Bahamian-style sushi, and even a pig roast.” Instead, they received dilapidated FEMA tents, rain-soaked mattresses, and cold cheese sandwiches. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Some scenes from inside the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FyreFestival?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FyreFestival</a> tents. Yes that is weed. <a href="https://t.co/ZiDKmRWf2V">pic.twitter.com/ZiDKmRWf2V</a>
&mdash; Elizabeth Pears (@BizPears) <a href="https://twitter.com/BizPears/status/858076136638730240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 28, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fyre-festival-ticketholders-will-only-get-refund-of-4-cents-on-the-dollar">The Daily Wire</a> recently reported, Gregory Messer — the Fyre Festival’s bankruptcy trustee — has spent the past four years filing suit against various celebrities in an attempt to provide ticketholders with refunds.
Messer sued Kendall Jenner — who was paid $275,000 by McFarland to endorse Fyre Festival — in August 2019. He was able to collect $90,000 of the original payment. 
<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/kendall-jenner-pay-90-000-settlement-promoting-fyre-festival-n1212011">NBC News</a> explained:
<blockquote>Messer also alleged that Jenner &#8220;intentionally&#8221; misinformed the public by claiming that her brother-in-law, Kanye West, would be performing at the event, after she tweeted, &#8220;So hyped to announce my G.O.O.D. Music Family as the first headliners for @fyrefestival.&#8221; She provided her followers with a promotion code they could use when purchasing tickets to supposedly &#8220;get on the list for the artists and talents afterparty on Fyre Cay&#8221; in that same tweet.</blockquote>
Other influencers were paid handsomely to sponsor and attend the event.
As the <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/07/07/fyre-festival-attendees-stand-to-recover-almost-nothing-from-bankruptcy/">New York Post</a> said: 
<blockquote>[Emily] Ratajkowski returned $37,500 of her $300,000 payment. Rock band Blink 182, which famously tweeted that it was backing out even as attendees arrived on the island, returned $157,100 of the $265,000 it had been paid.
After deducting expenses for his law firm, Messer will only be able to provide $1.4 million for ticketholders. Each individual would therefore receive four cents for each dollar of original spending.</blockquote>
The Fyre Festival saga, however, may be far from over. McFarland — who is currently <a href="https://djmag.com/news/billy-mcfarland-says-there-will-be-second-fyre-festival%20">serving</a> a six-year prison sentence — is writing a memoir entitled &#8220;Promythus: The God of Fyre.&#8221; He reportedly intends to publish the book as soon as possible, because Fyre Festival 2017 &#8220;will not be a one and done event — it’s happening again.”

Kendall Jenner

Celebrities Forced To Cough Up Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars After ‘Fyre Festival’ Debacle

Ticketholders for the “Fyre Festival” will receive a measly four cents on the dollar in refunds.
In 2017, entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule drew 5,000 people to a remote island in the Bahamas by <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/18/how-fyre-festivals-organizer-scammed-investors-out-of-26-million.html">promising</a> a luxury music festival experience. In return for their tickets — some of which sold for up to $100,000 — fans received cold cheese sandwiches and rain-soaked mattresses in dilapidated FEMA tents.
Many artists — including Pusha T, Tyga, Migos, and Blink-182 — dropped out of the festival days before it began. McFarland also paid Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and other influencers to promote the event on social media.
McFarland pleaded guilty in 2018 to three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and one charge of making false statements. He was sentenced to six years in prison and told to pay more than $26 million to defrauded customers and investors.
Gregory Messer — who has been overseeing the Fyre Festival’s bankruptcy for the past four years — recently asked for permission to distribute the paltry $1.4 million he was able to collect. As the <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/07/07/fyre-festival-attendees-stand-to-recover-almost-nothing-from-bankruptcy/">New York Post</a> reports:
<blockquote>After subtracting costs of roughly $1.1 million, including payment to Messer and his legal team, there will be just $300,000 left for creditors, court papers show. That will leave less than 4 cents on the dollar for the unsecured creditors, including ticketholders, who claim they are owed more than $7 million, Messer said.</blockquote>
As tickets ranged from $1,200 to $100,000 each, would-be attendees could receive as low as $48 in refunds.
The New York Post continues:
<blockquote>Jenner, younger sister to Kim Kardashian West, coughed up $90,000 of the $275,000 she received, court papers show. Ratajkowski returned $37,500 of her $300,000 payment. Rock band Blink 182, which famously tweeted that it was backing out even as attendees arrived on the island, returned $157,100 of the $265,000 it had been paid.
Messer says he had trouble clawing back money from many of the entities he went after, including musical acts, influencers and jet and yacht companies. Even though the musical acts &#8220;never performed… most of these artists had strong contracts,&#8221; he said. McFarland, meanwhile, &#8220;provided no cooperation&#8221; when it came to recovering funds and kept &#8220;essentially no books and records&#8221; that might help track down people who benefited from the scheme, the trustee said.</blockquote>
Messer is investigating whether footage included in Hulu and Netflix documentaries about the Fyre Festival is estate property, but otherwise intends to shutter the case.

‘Fyre Festival’ Ticketholders Will Only Get Refund Of 4 Cents On The Dollar

Billy McFarland, the man behind the infamous “Fyre Festival” failure and fraud, is working on a new project while in prison and insists this one isn’t a scam.
McFarland, in <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/04/03/fyre-fests-billy-mcfarland-reveals-new-project-from-prison-swears-its-no-scam/">an exclusive interview</a> with The New York Post, said prison had changed him and that now that coronavirus is keeping people home – and away from federal prisons – he has started a crowd-funding endeavor to help other inmates gain the ability to call their loved ones during the outbreak.
“Coronavirus is driving families apart . . . and visits are canceled across every federal prison,” McFarland told the Post. “I’m launching an initiative called Project-315 to bring together and connect in-need inmates and their families who are affected by coronavirus. We’re going to pay for calls for as many incarcerated people across the country as possible.”
Speaking with the Post on the phone from Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Lisbon, Ohio, McFarland said he was a changed man since his days selling a fantasy island-music experience to the wealthy.
“I see the important things in life . . . way more” he told the Post. “I got lost during Fyre — thinking that I had to make it work at all costs. I realize how immature and wrong that thought process was. I’ve grown up in jail.”
“There’s no question I totally messed up. It really makes me sick,” he added.
As the Post reported, McFarland, 28, “was <a href="https://pagesix.com/2018/10/11/fyre-festival-organizer-billy-mcfarland-sentenced-to-six-years-in-prison/?_ga=2.117360070.1902940981.1585583735-1514088245.1567529658">sentenced to six years in prison</a> and three years’ probation for wire fraud in relation to his ill-fated April 2017 Bahamas-based music Fyre Festival.” He was also ordered to pay $26 million in restitution to those he hurt with the Fyre Festival.
Instead of focusing on restitution, it appears he’s now looking to raise money to pay for inmates’ $3.15 standard cost for each 15-minute phone call to and from the prison. He’s raising that money on <a href="https://www.project-315.com/">Project-315.com</a> and insists this isn’t a scam.
“It’s totally reasonable that people would think this is a scam. The good thing is, this isn’t for me — it’s for the families of inmates, who are suffering because of what their loved ones did,” he told the Post, adding that he has friends “contributing off the bat” to “help the first few thousand families.”
“I have a small business team of four or five people, a mix of tech and entertainment people” helping as well, none of whom were involved in the Fyre festival.
“All the money that’s coming in is going directly to the initiative,” he added. “I’m not on any of the bank accounts or documents and I don’t have access to any of the funds.”
It does not appear as though the Post verified that McFarland was not connected to the bank accounts or documents.
McFarland also told the Post he still wants to make something like Fyre Festival happen.
“I want to focus on the theme of Magnises [the now-defunct credit card company he founded] and Fyre, which was to bring people together and create value through that,” he told the Post.
Those who watched either of the Fyre Festival documentaries will recall the credit card company was geared toward wealthy millennials in big cities who would use the exclusive card to gain perks.
If you’re skeptical, you’re not alone.

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