Axl Rose has had many beefs over his legendary career… from Motley Crue's Vince Neil, to Metallica, to Kurt Cobain and even his own bandmates like Slash. But now, the Guns N Roses frontman has bigger fish to fry – namely US President-elect Donald Trump.
Axl Rose's tweets recently have been mostly thanking the people of the city he played in last night. But over the weekend, he broke from that tradition, focusing on two pieces of news to come out of the Trump camp.
First, Rose lambasted Trump for nominated Senator Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General. The pick was criticized because Sessions was denied federal judgeship on accusations of racism, including once calling the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” for “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people" and said the KKK was okay until he found out they smoked pot. In response to the nomination, Rose said:
Good people don't listen to, acknowledge, nominate or elect people like Senator Jeff Sessions.
— Axl Rose (@axlrose) November 18, 2016
Then, you may have heard the news that Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a man who believed in LGBT conversion therapy and that women should have funerals for aborted fetuses, decided to take in a Broadway show, Hamilton, and got a mixed reaction from the audience while walking in. Once the show was over, during the curtain call, one of the actors addressed Pence directly saying:
“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’ We really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us. Again, we truly thank you truly for seeing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations.”
As a result of this, President-elect Trump tweeted that the cast of Hamilton owed Pence an apology, even though Pence himself said he was not offended. Rose wasn't having any of that either:
Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show. pic.twitter.com/Jsg9Q1pMZs
— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) November 19, 2016
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016
"Hamilton Cast harassed Pence." Do u ever stop whining?An apology?Seriously?!U won,this is the job,get on with it or get out of the kitchen.
— Axl Rose (@axlrose) November 19, 2016
Axl Rose tells Donald Trump to stop whining. I'm liking this more politically active Axl Rose.
Now we know this isn't a political site, so we'll try to limit the focus on musicians' takes on politcal matters, but in the last few days Trump has been accused of discussing personal business dealings while getting congratulations from the Argentinian President, conducted a business meeting with three Indian business partners, wasting taxpayer money by refusing to stay at the White House over weekends, dignitaries from other countries have promised to book stays at Trump properties to get political favor, oh and he settled his fraud lawsuit for $25 million dollars (after pocketing 5x as much) and will be able to write off the loss. Good times!
Meanwhile, Axl's GNR bandmate, Duff McKagan, wrote a pretty powerful piece about gun regulation.
