The outlets that hyped Vice President Harris’s campaign rally Friday with Beyonce as a free concert are now facing a backlash — and questions are swirling about whether the Harris campaign purposely misled the public and the press to draw crowds and attention.

The event and Beyonce’s endorsement should have been a layup for the Harris campaign. Instead, Ms. Harris faced boos from the crowd, and Republicans are calling Beyonce’s short speech and no musical performance a snub. 

Around 30,000 people attended the rally, which focused on women’s reproductive freedom — a winning issue for Democrats. The Houston-born singer’s hit song “Freedom” has been the anthem of the Harris-Walz campaign for months. 

USA Today promoted the event with a livestream countdown to the singer’s impending performance with the headline, “Watch live: Beyonce returns to hometown of Houston to perform at Kamala Harris rally.”

NPR also billed the event ahead of time as a Beyonce performance, calling it “BeyHive meets KHive.” MSNBC reported that a “source” confirmed the singer would perform. Vanity Fair reported that the superstar was expected to sing “Freedom,” and that when they asked the Harris campaign for confirmation, the campaign responded, “We can’t confirm.”

“They did not, however, issue a denial,” the article said.

Beyonce, though, did not perform.

After speaking for three minutes, during which she implored the audience to vote, Beyonce introduced Ms. Harris and exited the stage. That’s when the crowd erupted in boos.

Ms. Harris stood at the podium alone trying to quell the noise but — unlike Beyonce in her hit album — she couldn’t make lemonade out of lemons.

“They booed the hell out of everybody. They thought she was going to perform,” President Trump said at a Michigan rally. “They have to use people to get people to come.”

One radio show host called the event Beyonce-Gate. Several right-leaning accounts on social media are also trying to amplify the story. “She can’t even deliver on promises to her own followers with a Beyonce Performance, but yes she will totally close the border and stuff,” one posted to X.

“So what? This is obviously as important as how many weapons the North Koreans have concentrated at the DMZ right now,” a Democratic strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, tells the Sun. “Celebrity endorsers create excitement. They hit some portion of the electorate. They’re not deciders.”

Beyonce and her husband Jay Z performed for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump was often mocked in 2016 for having few celebrity endorsers. He traveled to the heartland, broke the blue wall, and won. 

Beyonce also performed at President Obama’s inaugural ball. Did the Harris campaign expect her to belt out at least one tune? Was this a snub or a calculated strategy?

The hyped performance is being compared to the teased mystery speaker on the final night of the Democratic National Convention that many speculated would be Beyonce or Taylor Swift. The speaker ended up being former secretary of defense, Leon Panetta. To those who sat glued to their TVs for hours of political speeches to see a star musical performance, this was a letdown. Yet it was also smart strategy on the part of Democrats.

The Harris campaign did not return the Sun’s request for comment.

A political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Jamieson, tells the Sun she doesn’t think the boos are going to have any impact on voters. She says the comedian who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday will likely have a bigger effect on Trump’s support from Latinos, because the Democrats immediately deployed celebrities to target these voters with condemnation videos and endorsements of Ms. Harris.

“The question is what is the carry through to other media environments,” Ms. Jamieson says. “It matters when it gets to an audience that otherwise wouldn’t have heard it.”

Ms. Jamieson says undecided potential Harris voters are not engaging with right-leaning accounts trying to hype the Beyonce story. Latinos, though, are following social media accounts from Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and other celebrities who came out in the wake of the Puerto Rico comments to endorse Ms. Harris.

“That’s why Bad Bunny matters. Beyonce being booed at the Harris rally for not performing,” she says, “that’s not going to matter.”