John Legend is calling out his fellow musicians who are throwing their support behind President Donald Trump amid the 2020 election. Taking the stage Monday night at a rally for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Lady Gaga also performed, the musician criticized rappers like Lil Wayne and Lil Pump for supporting the “selfishness” of the president.
Seated behind a piano and addressing the crowd, Legend slammed those who “see the meanness, the bullying, the selfishness of Donald Trump and they mistake it for strength, a kind of twisted masculinity.” He went on to state that “some see his greed and they mistake it for being good at business. Some of your former favorite rappers have been taken in by these lies.” In a reference to Jordan Peele’s Get Out, he joked that he thinks “they even founded a new supergroup, it’s called the Sunken Place.”
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.@JohnLegend: We’ll choose “a country where The President encourages police brutality and cannot bring himself to condemn white supremacists or neo-Nazis, or one where we hold our police accountable and begin to root out the systemic racism in our society.” pic.twitter.com/yKfpfSUDCm
— The Hill (@thehill) November 3, 2020
During his speech, Legend also took aim at Trump’s Platinum Plan, calling it “fool’s gold because you can’t bank on a word he says.” The policy proposal, brought forth in October, is aimed at toward Black voters and includes a number of “pillars” such as building neighborhoods with the “highest policing standards” and expanding school choice. It has been lauded by rappers like Lil Wayne, and Ice Cube is said to have collaborated with the administration on it. Legend, however, asked those musicians to “ask the students of Trump University. Ask all of the contractors he stiffed. Ask people his charity was supposed to help before it was shut down for being a fraud. Ask all the Black and Brown Americans who are dying from this virus and losing their jobs under his watch.”
“The president isn’t strong. He’s a coward. And his career in business and in government has been failure after failure after failure,” Legend added. “We need a president we can trust. That’s the kind of president Joe Biden will be. And he won’t only reverse the damage of the last four years hand-in-hand with Senator Kamala Harris, they will build back a better economy and country than ever before.”
His remarks came after a number of Black and Latinx entertainers endorsed the president ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Lil Pump endorsed the president on Oct. 25, criticizing Biden’s proposed tax plan. His endorsement was followed by that of Lil Wayne. Several others, however, have made it clear that they do not support Trump’s bid for re-election, with Lil Jon stating, “HOW ABOUT F– NOOOOOO” when asked if he would join the string of musicians endorsing the president.
