
EXCLUSIVE Fyre Festival's McFarland courts MAGA ahead of launch of mysterious new business venture
And curiously, the disgraced former owner of the Fyre Festival brand isn't offering many details about what it is.
McFarland teased his next dubious product during the first episode of a brand new show, Real America's Pop Culture, a project of the MAGA-friendly Real America's Voice (RAV) hosted by Adrienne Gray.
McFarland described his forthcoming venture as one that 'has more viability and fits better with [his] skill set than trying to do a festival.'
'We've built a new tech product,' he said.
After the disaster of the first Fyre Festival, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for defrauding investors out of $26 million along with over $100,000 in additional fraudulent ticket-selling schemes.
McFarland agreed to pay back his victims. Along with jail time he was ordered to forfeit the cash.
After serving under four years of his six-year sentence, he was released to a halfway house, and was under house arrest until September 2022.
Real America's Pop Culture debuts on RAV Saturday at 7:00 PM EST, and the maiden episode was reviewed exclusively by the Daily Mail.
Some of RAV's current big-name broadcasts include Steve Bannon 's War Room, Jack Posobiec's Human Events Daily, and The Charlie Kirk Show.
McFarland sold the intellectual property rights to Fyre Festival brand on ebay this week for a measly $245k, which he described as 'so low' while live-streaming the internet auction.
The Fyre Festival founder described the sale to Gray as a way to put a 'bow on the chapter of Fyre' which would then allow him to 'move on' and reveal his next move that he's been 'working on' which he will be 'announcing this summer.'
Gray, a 36 year old mother of two young boys who lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area, told the Daily Mail that her vision is to 'create a show where we have an intersection of politics and pop culture.'
Covering popular culture is a new venture for the conservative RAV network, and Real America's Pop Culture is planned to be the first show in an entirely new division called Real America's Music.
'I think about the show as ... my girlfriends group chat. It's the top headlines of the day in politics and the top, you know, headlines in pop culture,' Gray told the Daily Mail.
The show aims to bridge the gap between diverse personalities in American pop culture while engaging conservative audiences who care about music, movies, and entertainment as much as their liberal counterparts but have been abandoned by the left.
Asked by the Daily Mail who her dream show guest is, Gray replied, 'obviously Trump. He's the pop culture president.'
Back in July of 2024, Rolling Stone reported that the Fyre Festival founder was acting as an intermediary between rappers and the Trump campaign, adding that 'McFarland has helped connect rappers with Trump at least twice.'
McFarland also posted a photo with Trump on President's birthday in 2024.
As the former host of The Apprentice for its first 14 seasons, Trump has spent more time in the pop culture spotlight than the political one.
Gray told the Daily Mail that the Trump era seems like the ideal time for conservatives to reclaim pop culture, and that the creation of content such as her show may even help the right politically in bridging the gap the problematic demographics, including suburban women and young voters in Generation Z.
The show is not explicitly political despite it's home at RAV, and Gray plans to interview progressives and liberals as well as MAGA friendly celebrities.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
14 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Ghislaine Maxwell 'didn't hold back' about over '100 people' linked to Epstein during secret Trump DOJ meeting
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell 'didn't hold back' in answering every question President Donald Trump's Justice Department threw at her over the last two days. Maxwell, 63, completed a second day of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday afternoon. Attorney David Oscar Markus claimed that his client spoke with Blanche about '100 different people' related to Epstein's child sex trafficking ring. 'They asked about every possible thing you could imagine – everything,' Markus insisted. He also said Maxwell is being used as the 'scapegoat' in the entire Epstein case and has been 'treated unfairly for the last five years.' Blanche flew down to Florida on Wednesday as President Donald Trump 's administration continues to take heat for the alleged 'cover-up' of the Epstein files review. The No. 2 at the Justice Department met at the courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida on Thursday with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her crimes. After their meeting, he announced on X that he would have a second day of meetings with Maxwell and her attorney on Friday. Markus said on Friday that Maxwell has not asked for anything in exchange for speaking with the government about what she knows. 'No offers have been made,' he assured. 'We haven't asked for anything.' 'She literally answered every question,' Markus went on. 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people, she answered questions about everybody and she didn't hold anything back.' It's not clear when the DOJ will release what was learned in the meetings. Markus said Maxwell is grateful to have met with Blanche. She is continuing to appeal her sex trafficking conviction. The latest effort was opposed by the DOJ last week as she sought for the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that she shouldn't have been charged due a 2008 plea deal Epstein struck with the court. On Thursday after their meeting with Blanche, Markus said that Maxwell answers every question the deputy AG had for his client. President Donald Trump was about a potential pardon for Maxwell on Friday morning amid Blanche's meetings. 'I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I haven't thought about,' the president responded. Outside the courthouse in Tallahassee on Friday a plane flew overhead with a banner reading: 'Trump and Bondi are protecting predators.' Markus detailed the poor conditions he says his client has experienced over the last five years since Epstein's death in prison on August 10, 2019. He said Maxwell was 'treated like an animal' in prison and 'woken up every 15 minutes.'


Daily Mail
14 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Biden's ex-chief reveals Hillary Clinton approached him with worries about Joe's decline a year before the election
Senior Democrats close to Joe Biden told his former chief of staff that the then-president was on the decline, a source revealed to Daily Mail. Ron Klain, who was Biden's chief of staff for the first two years of his presidency, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill how Hillary Clinton and Biden's former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told him that the president was not 'politically viable' in 2024, a source said. Klain, 63, sat for a transcribed interview on Thursday with the House Oversight Committee, as part of Chairman James Comer's probe into whether former Biden officials intentionally hid signs of the president's decline. A source familiar with the interview told the Daily Mail that Klain, in his testimony, said both Clinton and Sullivan raised concerns to him in 2023 and 2024 about Biden's political chances for a second term. 'Mr. Klain stated President Biden's memory got worse,' over the course of his presidency, the source said, adding the former chief of staff admitted that 'Biden was less energetic and more forgetful but he still had the acuity to govern.' Additionally, 'Sullivan told Klain that Joe Biden was less effective in 2024 compared to 2022.' Clinton did not serve in Biden's administration. But Sullivan was in near daily contact with the then-president in his role as Biden's principal foreign policy aide. A spokesperson for Clinton did not respond to the Daily Mail's request for comment but did not dispute Klain's account to CNN, telling the network Clinton was concerned with how the question of Biden's age was being handled politically in light of the attacks and questions he was facing. Biden dropped out of the race in July of last year after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June 2024, where he froze on stage and struggled to answer questions. A spokesperson for Sullivan pushed back on Klain's account of the timing of their conversation. 'Jake did not have a conversation with Ron about Joe Biden running for president before the debate,' Adrienne Watson, a representative for Sullivan, told Daily Mail. Klain, unlike other Biden staffers, did not plead the Fifth amendment and answered the lawmakers' questions in his appearance before the House Oversight committee. The interview took placed behind-closed doors. Despite leaving government service after two years in the White House, Klain had an up close view of Biden in the final years of his presidency and was considered a key outside adviser. He was among the aides who helped prepare Biden for that infamous debate, running 'debate camp' at Camp David. Biden's struggles during that debate supercharged questions about his health and mental well-being that had been circulating for months. Several Democratic leaders - including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi - questioned his ability to remain as the party's nominee and moved to push him out of the race. Hunter Biden, the former president's son, told a podcast earlier this week that his father had been given the sleep aid Ambien ahead of the debate because of a harrowing travel schedule that preceded that contest. 'I know exactly what happened in that debate,' Hunter Biden told YouTube creator Andrew Callaghan on Monday. 'He (Joe Biden) flew around the world, basically the mileage he could have flown around the world three times. He's 81 years old.' 'They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights,' the younger Biden added. But Klain said he was unaware whether Biden took Ambien the evening before the June 2024 presidential debate and relayed that 'the president appeared tired and ill before the debate.' There are more interviews with Biden's former staff on the docket as Republicans probe a possible coverup of the president's health and Comer has threatened to use a subpoena to entice testimony. Comer's witness list includes the most powerful figures in the Biden White House, such as aides with unfettered access to the residence where the president lived with Jill Biden and those who handled Biden's daily schedule. Several have already appeared before the lawmakers - and many invoked their Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer questions. Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Jill Biden's top aide and Dr. Kevin O'Connor, Biden's personal physician, all pleaded the Fifth Amendment.


The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Education Department says it will release billions in remaining withheld grant money for schools
The Trump administration is releasing billions of dollars in grants to schools for adult literacy, English language instruction and other programs, the Education Department said Friday. President Donald Trump 's administration had withheld $6 billion in funding on July 1 as part of a review to ensure spending aligned with the White House's priorities. Officials later said the department would release $1.3 billion of the money for after-school programs, days after 10 Republican senators sent a letter imploring the administration to allow frozen education money to be sent to states. The Education Department said Friday the administration had completed its review of the programs and will begin sending the money to states next week. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at