Democratic congressman Brad Sherman, a stalwart supporter of the US-Israel alliance, said Trump "did sing some of the greatest hits of Aipac, he may have sung them a bit off key but he sang them with enthusiasm and he's a great stadium performer".
And now they've marched off, and the flag-bearers are emerging from underneath the stadium … Performers take part in the closing ceremony for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
"No – my contemporary art music funds my burgeoning middle-aged pop sensation career!" She hardly sees herself as a stadium-filling performer ("I wouldn't know how to leap about and smash my clarinet off an amp," she laughs) but the increasing grey area between classical and pop music has made it easier for her to lean towards the latter.
Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer has argued that the cap on profits from reselling tickets should be lifted but that the penalties should be stiffened for bribing stadium employees, producers, performers and venue owners.
"The last thing I directed [2008's Let There Be Love] had seven actors, and here I am directing a stadium, with 1,000 performers and with 40,000 people cheering," he says of the opening ceremony, which included Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Angélique Kidjo, Toumani Diabaté and Wyclef Jean.
This year's performers include stadium pop-rockers the 1975, sunny Chicago hip-hop star Chance The Rapper and old Rocket Man himself, Elton John.
"But in all this display of the masses," he says, after witnessing a stadium full of orchestrated performers, "I find an underlying emptiness and solitude".
The On the Run Tour was the co-headlining stadium tour by American performer Beyoncé and rapper Jay-Z.
Hess trod the same turf as a volunteer usher for Radio City Music Hall performers when the stadium hosted the Super Bowl in January 2003.
