Sheeran in hot water over consulting billionaire about Macklemore

Ed Sheeran's world tour has been at a crossroads. All of his supporting acts have now dropped out, standing in solidarity with the rapper Macklemore after he was removed for making Free Palestine comments. What happens to Sheeran now? Well, it's interesting because people were waiting for him to respond. He finally did on social media, maybe not with the reaction Ed Sheeran was expecting. He was trying to say, you know, I'm acknowledging that there's something happening in this world. Sometimes I don't want to share how I feel about it. I'm not complicit. I'm just not weighing in on certain things. But people are now pointing out the contradiction in that because Ed Sheeran has spoken on very social and political issues. He's shown his support for Ukraine, of course, to his LGBTQ rights. He has spoken out about a lot of things, but now the double standard here when it comes to Macklemore's comments and now the way Ed Sheeran is responding is money talking in this case. That's the big question. Can you be silent on a political issue as big as this? Well, I will say that the Ed Sheeran case is a particularly interesting one because he said that he's done some consulting. He's talked to all these. He blames the venues. He says building bridges he's been doing for the past few days. That's right. But he talked about the venues that have been like, hey, the venues really have a problem with Macklemore performing. So I'm not going to not be able to see my fans. So therefore, I have to drop. We had to drop Macklemore. That was a decision that came from that. In his statement, he said, I consulted Robert Kraft. Robert Kraft, of course, the owner of the Patriots, a billionaire. And the idea that Ed Sheeran would say, this is who I'm consulting. These are the people I'm consulting. It actually struck a lot of people being like, hang on. So you called the billionaire and you said, is it OK if I have Macklemore still playing these? A guy who has been very pro-Israel over many years. Long before this tour. It's not a secret that Macklemore has talked about Palestinian rights. He's got a song. And maybe he's the guy you call, but is he the only guy you call? But this is the question. And also, is he the only guy that you name check in your statement? That felt very strange to me that Ed Sheeran would sort of put that as a part of this. So I feel like whatever his initial response was, I feel like the PR crisis has gotten even worse.