Trent Reznor and Taylor Swift

It’s no secret that Trent Reznor isn’t a fan of Donald Trump; he’s previously described the president as a “fucking vulgarian” and an “imbecile”. But the Nine Inch Nails frontman appears to be equally irked by those who remain silent.



In a new interview with the New York Times, Reznor was asked if felt a responsibility to address politics. “I was doing press with somebody in the mid-90s, and they made an argument that stayed with me: that I have influence, and that it’s my job to call out whatever needs to be called out, because there are people who feel the same way but need someone to articulate it,” Reznor responded. “And I think about that today, because it seemed like it was a lot easier to just keep your mouth shut and let it go back then.”

He then proceeded to call out “the Taylor Swifts of the world, and top-tier, needle-moving cultural youth,” who stay silent “because they are concerned about their brand, their demographic and their success and career and whatnot.”

“It’s not the conservative agenda, it’s not a question of religious preference, it’s not a question of should government be big or small. I don’t have any problem with those topics,” Reznor added. “But the disregard for decency and truth and civility is what’s really disheartening. It feels like a country that celebrates stupidity is really taking it up a notch.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Reznor was asked about scoring the Ken Burns documentary Vietnam and whether the project impacted his current thinking. He responded: “I realized that I naïvely had faith that the government must know what they’re doing. There are conversations in the footage for the documentary where you realize they’re winging it: ‘Can’t let the public know this, I’ll never get re-elected.’ And that call costs so many lives. It’s worrying. And yet I would tend to think the people in charge then were significantly more enlightened or worthy of their positions than the crew we’ve got in there right now.”

For more Trump bashing, read Bruce Springsteen’s rebuke of the president’s “disgracefully inhumane and un-American” immigration policy.

As for Nine Inch Nails, their new album Bad Witch arrives on Friday.