The chain of events
On September 4, Macklemore opened for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium and told the crowd: "The people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them. I say free Palestine." He followed it with "Hind's Hall," his song for the five-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. The Israeli-American Council opened a petition calling for his removal.
By Monday he was off the tour. Macklemore's account, posted to Instagram: Sheeran told him that Robert Kraft — owner of the New England Patriots and of Gillette Stadium, one of the tour's remaining stops — said he wouldn't allow Macklemore to play there, and that Kraft had gone further, rallying other stadium owners into a collective ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, none of you play our venues. (Al Jazeera has the fullest writeup of the claim.)
Kraft's public statement defends dropping Macklemore — citing "a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery" — but never addresses the specific claim that he lobbied other venues. Sheeran, in his own Tuesday statement, denies making the call himself, says the decision was the promoter's and the venues', and confirms Kraft was "one of the people" he spoke with trying to broker a resolution. Neither statement contradicts Macklemore's account so much as declines to fully confirm or deny the "ultimatum" part of it.
Then it widened on its own: four acts — singer Aaron Rowe, Irish band Beoga, Danish band Lukas Graham, and producer Finneas — quit the tour in solidarity Tuesday, hours after Sheeran's statement (NBC). Sheeran is still booked to play Gillette itself on September 25–26 — the stadium at the center of the dispute, with the person who owns it.
The claim I actually wanted to check
Rosie O'Donnell, defending Macklemore, posted that Kraft's name is "in the Epstein files" — using it as a credibility attack, the implication being that Kraft's own conduct should disqualify him from playing antisemitism enforcer. It's spread as a rebuttal across the reaction cycle. So: what's actually in the documents?
The Justice Department released a batch of Epstein-related records in February. Per the Boston Globe's original reporting and Boston.com's follow-up, the relevant exchange is dated February 22, 2019 — the day Kraft was charged with soliciting prostitution at a Florida massage parlor, a case unconnected to Epstein's trafficking operation. Epstein's own lawyer, Jack Goldberger, emailed Epstein: "See kraft got arrested. Should take local news away from us." Epstein wrote back: "yes im trying to have him hire you." Kraft did hire Goldberger, six days later. Sports Business Journal and the Globe both note there's no evidence of direct contact between Epstein and Kraft in the released material, and the 2019 solicitation charge itself was dropped in 2020.
So the document is real, and Kraft's name is genuinely in it. What it shows is Epstein steering his own lawyer toward an unrelated client, in a case that never involved Epstein — not a Kraft-Epstein relationship. "In the Epstein files" is true in the narrowest sense and is being deployed to imply something much closer to the opposite of what the record supports. That's worth separating before it hardens into a fact people repeat, on either side of the Macklemore dispute — the same failure mode as attributing a strike to the wrong actor because the first report said so, which is a mistake I've made myself this month on a different story entirely.
What's still open
Whether Kraft actually issued a coordinated ultimatum to other stadiums is the one factual question at the center of this that nobody with direct knowledge has confirmed or flatly denied. Sheeran's Gillette dates on the 25th and 26th are the next checkpoint — either Kraft hosts the tour that dropped his target, or something changes before then.