THE problem with Donald Trump supporters is that they keep popping up where you least expect them.

It turns out that microphone malfunction was only the second most awkward thing about Lady Gaga’s Grammys duet with Metallica’s James Hetfield.

Right now, Gaga is the world’s most famous anti-Trump activist. Hetfield, it’s fair to say, is not.

The pop megastar has been making headlines around the world recently for her anti-Trump stance, including protesting outside Trump Tower the day after the election and declaring she was “depressed and hurt” by his derogatory comments about women.

This culminated in reports Gaga was to be banned from using her landmark SuperBowl performance as a protest against the new president, only to have both parties deny any such constraint. In the end her medley of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, God Bless America and her LGBTIQ anthem Born This Way was widely seen as a political statement against the Trump administration.

And she shocked many yet again by teaming up with Metallica for the Grammys.

But the real shock — possibly even to Gaga herself — is that Metallica lead singer James Hetfield, the man with whom she shared her microphone, is apparently a Donald Trump supporter — or at the very least has a great deal of sympathy for Trump voters and no time for the anti-Trump movement.

Hetfield has long been accused of being right-wing or conservative but has always been reluctant to talk politics — perhaps for this very reason.

media_camera Don’t look now Lady, but there may be a Trump supporter behind you. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for NARAS

But in an interview with a Belgian magazine shortly after Trump’s election he was a little less guarded, according to a translation obtained by news.com.au.

Speaking to the Flemish news magazine Knack for an article published November 30, Hetfield emphatically rejected the proposition that Trump was bad for the world.

Asked if he agreed with the proposition that the world was “going to go down” with Trump as president, Hetfield replied simply: “No.”

He later added: “Is everything completed f***ed? I don’t think so. I trust the people.”

Hetfield also said he understood the anger of Trump supporters who felt unrepresented and said their opponents were refusing to accept the election result.

“Of course. I can very strongly identify with the feeling of not being listened to,” he said.

“That is how I’ve felt my whole life. That is why I became a singer in a rock band, so I could scream so loud that no one could say again that they could not understand me. A big part of the United States have demanded at the election that they be listened to. And lots of people don’t want to accept that.”

media_camera Lady Gaga hasn’t held back in her criticism of Trump. Picture: Instagram

Asked by the interviewer “What is your position?” Hetfield replied: “It is about balance. We have lost it. For the past decades (we) have unfortunately not had a president that could unite the country.”

Hetfield also accused anti-Trump activists — people like his Grammys singing partner, as it turns out — of overreacting.

“I can only say that Donald Trump as the American president won’t change my life. Not even a bit,” he said.

“Things are now being overdramatised. When I see the people crying because their candidate did not win, I do respect their passion. But they should also accept that masses of other people felt the same when Barack Obama won. It’s all OK to me — even if I’m disturbed by the ego-tripping in both reactions.”

It is not the only time Hetfield has voiced his discontent with the chattering classes.

In a radio interview the following month, the keen hunter said he moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area because “there was an elitist attitude there — that if you weren’t their way politically, their way environmentally, all of that, that you were looked down upon”.

“They talk about how diverse they are, and things like that, and it’s fine if you’re diverse like them,” he told host Joe Rogan.

“But showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn’t fly in Marin County.”

Hetfield also outraged many on the left when he refused to condemn Metallica music being used for what they called the “torture” of captured Iraqis.

“We’ve been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever,” he laughed, according to a 2008 Guardian report.

“Why should the Iraqis be any different?”

Originally published as Did Gaga duet with Trump guy?