Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins on President Trump: ‘We Got What We Deserve’
Foo Fighters played the Open’er Festival in Poland recently and while there, drummer Taylor Hawkins and bassist Nate Mendel sat down with Onet News to talk about a variety of topics, including the political climate in the United States.
“I mean it’s insane, but you know, it really is a mirror image of our culture in America right now," Hawkins says. "So people blame [President Trump], but he’s just a symptom of a generation of reality TV obsessed, selfie obsessed, Facebook obsessed, tweet obsessed, self-obsessed people. So we got that president because I think, unless the Russians really did hack in, we got what we deserve."
Hawkins admitted that as a band, Foo Fighters "tend to stray abstractly politically," though they have performed benefits for former President Barack Obama and supported 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry during his failed 2004 run for office.
"I think in a certain way, it’s a good chance for people to take a look at where we are as a culture and say, is this where we want to be?" Hawkins continues. "An orange, fake haired, tweeting president, who tweets childish remarks about people who say little mean things about him, because that’s where we are right now. It’s a fricking weird freaky time, but it’s really representative of where our culture is right now."
Chalking up Trump's surprise win in the election to a disgruntled middle America, Hawkins acknowledged the region is much different than the cities of New York and Los Angeles.
"There’s a whole middle America out there who believed it when he said, ‘We’re going to make America great again,’ which is just f--king rhetoric," he says. "We got an orange president who tweets, it’s insane! As Dave [Grohl] has said, there’s going to be a lot of good rock and roll hopefully, or music that can come out of political strife. It’s a hell of a price to pay for some good music, but hopefully at least that'll happen. I don’t know, hopefully people are taking a look at themselves right now, and their culture, saying okay, have we gone too far? Because I think we have.”
Foo Fighters are prepping the release of their upcoming album Concrete and Gold, which comes out Sept. 15. The band is currently touring Europe and Asia before returning to the States for a series of shows beginning Oct. 7 at Cal Jam 17 in San Bernardino, Calif. The full run of dates can be found here.
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