The New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago featured a performance by rapper Vanilla Ice, launching the early-1990s sensation as 2024’s first musical act to trend on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, entertained the crowd at former President Trump’s resort alongside another 1990s pop culture staple, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Trump can be seen in videos standing in the room as Vanilla Ice performs.
The evening also included an Elvis impersonator, who Trump watched in a ballroom, seated at what appears to be a dinner table.
In a speech to attendants, Trump excused former first lady Melania Trump, who he said was spending the holiday in a Miami hospital at her mother’s bedside.
Trump joked that Mar-a-Lago members were “scalping tickets” before briefly turning to politics, name-checking the Iowa GOP caucuses, due to start in three weeks.
“We’re going to have a fantastic year. Our country has gone to hell but we’re going to turn it around, we’re going to turn it around quickly,” said Trump.
Among the guests at the party was Roger Stone, the conservative political consultant who was convicted in connection to the Mueller investigation and was pardoned by Trump in 2020.
Vanilla Ice was not the only act from the 1990s to receive political online attention Monday — rock band Green Day got praise from the left and scorn from the right for altering one of their most famous lyrics to fit the times.
In an appearance on ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” hosted by Ryan Seacrest, singer Billie Joe Armstrong tweaked the lyrics to “American Idiot” from “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”