Prophets of Rage‘s Tom Morello has doubled down on his criticism of US President Donald Trump, branding him an “orange-faced demagogue”.
The Rage Against The Machine icon has been one of Trump’s biggest critics and frequently wears a guitar printed with the words “Fuck Trump”.
Speaking to NME at Mad Cool Festival 2019, Morello explained that Trump’s supporters mistakenly believe that he’s providing a voice to the disenfranchised.
“I think that the symptoms of people feeling left behind by the global economy, Donald Trump provides an easy — and not just Donald Trump; I think it’s Brexit as well, and in Brazil there’s a right-wing, populist fascist in power,” he said.
“People who are left behind by the neoliberal policies — white working-class people, generally — are susceptible to demagogues who use racism and anti-immigration sentiment to stir them up so they don’t focus on what the real problem is, which is a system that underserves the planet. The planet who own and run the planet don’t deserve to, and they’re running it into the ground.”
“They’re creating a miserable environmental state of affairs and economic state of affairs for a lot of people. Now, one of the reasons why we’ve been playing music for as long as we have is to provide an alternative set of ideals — like progressive politics, solidarity, environmental sanity, anti-racism, anti-fascism — as another way to deal with the inequities of life.”
Slamming Trump as an “orange-faced demagogue”, Morello also criticised Trump for demonising Mexicans and said that America’s issues are “his fucking fault”.
Bandmate Brad Wilk added: “And at the end of the day, it’s not gonna even matter if we don’t get the environment right. It’s not gonna matter who it is. By 2028, they said all the glaciers in India are gonna be gone. So think about that, and think about that happening all around the world. We’re not gonna be able to survive that. It’s gonna be a horrific situation. So we should do something soon.”
This comes after their Mad Cool performance saw Prophets of Rage debuting ‘Made With Hate’ for the first time ever. You can check that out here.