logo
John Legend sparks backlash as footage surfaces of him making heinous accusation against Trump

John Legend sparks backlash as footage surfaces of him making heinous accusation against Trump

Daily Mail​23-04-2025

Singer John Legend was slammed on Tuesday after footage emerged of him calling Donald Trump a white supremacist.
A lifelong liberal, Legend - along with wife Chrissy Teigen - has called Trump a 'dyed in the wool racist' with Trump describing him as a 'boring musician' and Teigen as 'filthy-mouthed' for calling him a 'p***y-a** b****' in 2019.
Now, a clip of The Voice judge speaking at The Fifteen Percent Pledge's 15th Street Block Party in Hollywood in February has surfaced with Legend again going all in on his distaste for the president.
'America made a decision that I strongly disagree with and it seems that we are reaping the whirlwind right now,' Legend said of Trump's victory.
He described Trump as 'a terrible leader, especially in a crisis' and accused Trump of, weeks into his second term, 'blaming,' 'dividing' and 'misinforming people.'
Legend - real name John Roger Stephens - said Trump should have been 'bringing people together' instead.
The moderator than asked why Trump has 'latched on to diversity so much' in front of a marquee that read 'DEI is more than just a headline.'
'Well, he's a bigot. It's a belief that there's a hierarchy of racial groups and that his group is superior, genetically superior,' Legend said to applause from the crowd.
'He believes that. Whenever he talks about competence and qualifications, any white man will do for him!'
Legend then compared and contrasted Joe Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and current head of the Pentagon Pete Hegseth.
'He was a four-star generally, supremely qualified black man and then see who he put after him!'
Legend added: 'That's the level of bigotry that he has - any white man is better than that.'
MAGA supporters came to the president's defense on social media, with one writing: 'Trump should sue. Stop letting this slide.'
'All this division is sad,' wrote another.
One pointed out Legend's hypocrisy, writing: 'Only a Democrat could claim 'Trump is divisive' in one breath & say 'MAGA is white supremacist' in the next.' ]
'If President Trump ever said anything like this, it would be played by legacy media on repeat. This is projection 101; John Legend is the divisive racist,' said one more Trump fan.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Aurora James 🦢 (@aurorajames)
Another mocked Legend's stage name: 'The douche changed his last name to Legend so he clearly believes he is superior to everybody.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment.
Legend, 45 and his wife, model and author Chrissy Teigen, have long professed their disdain for Trump, with the ex-Commander-in-Chief even sniping back once.
Speaking with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki last April, the 'All of You' singer continued his oft-repeated claims that Trump holds racial prejudices when asked about Trump's complaints about the US justice system.
'He's made it clear throughout his life that Black people are inferior, he believes that to his core, in his bones... but also when you hear some of the stray comments he makes, he clearly believes in a genetic hierarchy of humanity and is racially determined, so he is a tried and true, dyed-in-the-wool racist,' Legend said.
Legend believes this cancels out any benefit the black community may have had under Trump's rule.
'I don't want to hear what he says to say about what he's done for black people,' Legend said. 'He's done very little for us and he is at his core, truly, truly a racist.'
Legend was discussing his efforts to push for criminal justice reform and said Trump is, in a way, correct that the justice system is unfair.
'There is a two-tiered justice system, but not in the way that he thinks. He's the beneficiary, absolutely ... the fact that he's out in the world, that's not normal for a lot of people.'
'He's gotten away with a lot for a long time, he's been a fraudster for a long time, he's been cheating people for a long time, he's been lying for a long time and he's actually been litigating for a long time,' he added.
Legend - born John Roger Stephens - has been speaking out against Trump since he began running for public office.
His belief that Trump is a racist dates at least to 2016, when he feuded with Trump's son Don Jr, whom the singer was classmates at the University of Pennsylvania.
The singer even said that he ended his friendship with rapper Ye - formerly Kanye West - over his support of the ex-president.
Legend even went as far as to once call Trump 'a flaming racist. He's a piece of sh**.'
He and wife Teigen were one of many celebrities who swore they'd leave America if Trump won in 2020.
Perhaps most bizarrely, the couple's feud with Trump made its way into the 'Twitter files,' a series of reveals regarding liberal bias on the social media platform now known as X.
Trump had referenced the model in his own 2019 tweet, where he tagged her husband, musician, John Legend and referenced his 'filthy mouthed wife.'
That prompted Teigen to respond online: 'lol what a p**** a** b****' – in a comment the official said the White House wanted removed.
More recently, Legend defended Haitian migrants moving into his hometown of Springfield, Ohio amid Trump claiming they were eating dogs and cats.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

LA on lockdown as Donald Trump calls protesters 'animals' in fresh unhinged rant
LA on lockdown as Donald Trump calls protesters 'animals' in fresh unhinged rant

Daily Mirror

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mirror

LA on lockdown as Donald Trump calls protesters 'animals' in fresh unhinged rant

Donald Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom have again entered a slanging match as protests continued in Los Angeles, part of which is now subject to a no-go zone Part of Los Angeles has been put into lockdown following anarchic riots over the past week, sparked as a result of Donald Trump's gung-ho immigration policy. The US President branded protesters "animals" and "a foreign enemy" before Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass caved in and declared a local emergency. Demonstrators set fire to cars, looted buildings and attacked officers with rocks, fireworks and cement bricks in harrowing scenes of destruction in recent days. ‌ It means Downtown, Los Angeles, will be a no-go zone until 6am Wednesday (2pm UK time). The same curfew is likely to be repeated for several nights. Ms Bass warned: "If you do not live or work in Downtown LA avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted... Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance as though this is a city wide crisis and is not." ‌ Her move came after Mr Trump, in his most aggressive language yet regarding the protests, called demonstrators "a foreign enemy". Speaking to reporters in Fort Bragg, California, the Republican President said: "We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That's what they are." Mr Trump received plenty of cheers from the crowd at the event, which was supposed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US Army. READ MORE: Donald Trump brands Greta Thunberg a 'young, angry person' in blistering attack But California Governor Gavin Newsom hit back at the world leader. After the lockdown was imposed, effectively banning daytime protests in Downtown, Gov Newsom blamed the federal government for the ongoing crisis. He said: "Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves, but they do not stop there. This is a president who in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He's declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally, are vanishing." Gov Newsom claimed that "when Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. He made that order apply to every state in this nation. "This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived... What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him." Mr Trump gave orders to send 700 Marines and 4,100 National Guard troops in to take over policing efforts and assist the Los Angeles Police Department amid the tensions. At least 23 businesses have been looted during the ongoing violence.

Los Angeles, Donald Trump and the moronic inferno
Los Angeles, Donald Trump and the moronic inferno

New Statesman​

timean hour ago

  • New Statesman​

Los Angeles, Donald Trump and the moronic inferno

Photo by David Swanson/Reuters Just as Vladimir Putin hungers to occupy Ukraine, it seems that Donald Trump hungers to occupy America. At time of writing, the president has ordered 4,000 members of the National Guard along with 700 US marines to California to put down protests there against the random arrest of (possibly) undocumented immigrants. Cars ablaze, charging phalanxes of soldiers, protesters' bloody faces: Trump's actions seem likely to provoke the demonstrators to levels of violence not seen since the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Perhaps that is the intention. The effect is ominous. Trump's overruling of a state governor to deploy these troops is the first such presidential action since Lyndon Johnson sent federal soldiers into Alabama in 1965, and that was to protect civil rights protesters, not attack them. It appears no precedent, or lack of one, can constrain America's leader. Trump simply has nothing to lose from whatever he does. Not from the violence he is unleashing in California, and certainly not from his obsessively covered and commented-upon falling out with Elon Musk, Trump's adviser and patron until recently. Musk, the world's wealthiest man, runs no real risk, either. Worth nearly $400bn dollars, Musk might, if Trump cancels his federal contracts, lose some mere billions. In fact he lost far more after the value of his companies sank thanks to his alliance with Trump. This hasn't stopped the American media from milking their row for all the page views it is worth. The brouhaha is wearying. More consequential, especially in the light of Trump's actions in LA, is a lesser-noticed split between Trump and another former ally: Miles Taylor, the former homeland security official from Trump's first administration. In an anonymous 2018 op-ed in the New York Times, then in a book published anonymously, he questioned Trump's fitness to hold office (Taylor revealed his identity in 2020). In April, Trump publicly suggested that Taylor had committed treason, a crime punishable by death. Trump has directed the Justice Department to investigate Taylor, who, with his family, has been in hiding since 2020. Now the family are trying to raise money for a legal defence. No American president has ever had an American investigated for committing treason for merely criticising the government, let alone publicly slandered them as a traitor. The New York Times glancingly mentioned Trump's accusation of espionage against Taylor in just one article, which covered several subjects of the president's vindictive rage. Yet at one point, the paper had no fewer than ten stories about the spat between Trump and Musk at the top of its homepage. The usually more sober, though Trump-whispering, Wall Street Journal had five up top. Meanwhile Gaza and Ukraine burn, China and Russia gloat, Europeans move so far away from America that it will take another Columbus to rediscover the place, and Trump's wanton slaughter of American institutions and values rolls forward. The world's most powerful man breaking with the world's richest man is newsworthy. But the idea – as pundits have said, again and again – that in the light of the rift American politics will change profoundly is absurd. Trump's persecution of one of his critics as a traitor is what will change American politics profoundly. Musk, who is unpopular, lacks the stature to stand the political order on its head. His threat to form a third party is as toothless as it is standard for an embittered rival to make. For all his wealth, he could not even get a Trump-supported judge elected in Wisconsin in April. And rather than the two men emerging as losers from their quarrel, they both come out smelling like roses. Trump was glad to have the chainsaw-wielding Musk serve as his fall-guy for the unpopular gutting of vital American agencies. Musk was happy to have the opportunity to move bureaucrats who were attempting to regulate his businesses out of the way. The limited and short-lived repercussions of Musk's antagonism with Trump are nothing compared to the ongoing consequences of their collaboration. As for the much-touted break between Maga and tech, Trump recently signed a mammoth contract with Palantir, the data analysis and technology company co-founded by Peter Thiel. This is not to say that the Trump-Musk rift does not offer an illumination. At its heart, it is an encounter between two present-day American archetypes: Musk, a digitally formed persona who seems lacking in emotional intelligence; and Trump, an old-fashioned analogue figure who makes up for what he lacks in knowledge and intellect with his preternatural ability to grasp people and what they fundamentally want. Consider his actions in Los Angeles: a level of policing brutality that plays up to the 'law and order' fever dreams of parts of the American public. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe After all, it is Trump's emotional canniness that has allowed him for decades to play the media like a farmed salmon. As the all-consuming uproar over his break with Musk showed, his strongest talent is to create smoke and mirrors in order to obscure the reality of his actions. His sweet spot is to rivet attention. The media's sweet spot is also to rivet attention. This is what lends such a fatal momentum to every spectacle Trump creates. The more the media conscientiously portrays Trump's cruelty in LA, the more his followers thrill to his power. It is Greek tragedy: every motion of American freedom now has the effect of turning freedom in America in on itself. [See also: Trump's nuclear test] Related

Laughing at the populist right is not a political strategy
Laughing at the populist right is not a political strategy

New Statesman​

timean hour ago

  • New Statesman​

Laughing at the populist right is not a political strategy

Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images Across north London, in the citadels of the liberal elite, it has been hard to hear yourself think. The roars, whoops and whistles of merry laughter; the stamping of feet on floorboards; the wheezing, the rasping coughs and the slapping of thighs… yes, Donald and Elon, not to mention Nigel and Zia, have brought a lot of innocent cheer. This is not simply about great egos falling out: a voyeuristic thrill as the world's most powerful man and the world's richest man traded insults. It also poses a more important question about whether the revolutionary surge by the populist right, which began in America, is starting to collapse, weighed down by contradictions. After all, in taking aim at President Trump's 'big beautiful bill' in the cause of fiscal sanity, Musk put his finger on the glaring ideological fissure inside today's new right – the gap between traditional fiscal conservatives who believe growth comes from low taxes balanced by tightly controlled government spending; and the performative hucksters, happy to offer whatever the voter base wants, affordable or not. I'm well aware that this flatters Elon Musk, who has been happy to have his company suck greedily at the teat of federal spending, and who only seems to have seen the light when he realised how much the withdrawal of electric vehicle subsidies in the bill would have hit Tesla. Further, Musk's threats to cancel the Dragon rocket programme on which the International Space Station depends – threats he then reversed – and his accusation about Trump's involvement with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – an accusation he then deleted – suggests a man on the edge. Some have pointed to Musk's disclosures about his ketamine use. Trump simply taunted him by saying he is 'losing his mind'. Either way, Musk doesn't look or sound much like a traditional Republican. The tech-titan lobby he speaks for is desperate for lavish US government support and subsidy – and, indeed, in its fight with Chinese rivals, has a strong case for long-term federal backing. If Musk is genuinely gone for good from Trumpland, and it's hard to see a way back, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman will have their thumbs competing for the West Wing doorbell soon. Meanwhile, Musk's Doge, strongly backed in Silicon Valley, so far seems like a damp squib – the tree has defeated the chainsaw. But let's try to put all that to one side. There is still a fundamental difference between the pork-barrel, 'spend big, promise bigger' instincts of Trump himself, using borrowed money to fling tax cuts to his hugely rich friends, and the genuine anxiety of Elon Musk about a swollen federal budget and debt. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Does this divide expose the very nature of the Maga movement? It's powered by poorer, excluded Americans who may have deep hatred of 'woke' culture, but who are interested in their own economic position – blue-collar Americans who want factories brought back home, but also want to keep their benefits, and have a deep suspicion of the political elite. The Trump bill, slashing taxes for the richest while cutting Medicare and other programmes for the poorest, shows whose side he is on; if Musk's campaign to stop the bill by encouraging a platoon of rebel Republicans to block it in the Senate were to succeed, he would be doing a favour not just to the increasingly worried bond markets but also to the Maga base. Let's turn nearer to home, where the gone, gone-back-again Zia Yusuf, the pinging Reform UK chairman who had floated a British version of Doge, offers a parallel. Reform faces two substantial policy challenges. One is 'respectability' – how far to go in an anti-migrant, race-inflected direction in order to energise its coalition? The second is economic. Like Maga, Reform has a blue-collar, working-class base and is offering not just huge tax cuts of nearly £90bn a year but also spending increases of £50bn a year on things those voters want more of, such as the NHS. It says it can pay for this with cuts of £150bn a year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the numbers don't add up: 'Spending reductions would save less than stated, and the tax cuts would cost more than stated, by a margin of tens of billions of pounds per year.' This suggests, as with the Trump bill, that poorer Farage supporters would find their benefits under threat, while middle-class ones wouldn't get the tax cuts they wanted. Unsurprisingly, and after seeing off Reform in the Hamilton Scottish parliamentary by-election, Keir Starmer has jumped on this, comparing the Farage package to Liz Truss and accusing him of making the same bet – 'that you can spend tens of billions on tax cuts without a proper way of paying for it'. And so we come to this week and the Spending Review. Fundamentally, the fight ahead is about credibility and timing. Populists insist there are quick, almost painless short-term fixes to the long problem of low productivity and growth. They suggest you can slash taxes and simultaneously improve working-class living standards. Reeves' version of social democracy has an answer to this – the big investments announced this week in everything from nuclear power to transport connections. Invest, long-term and patiently, and the growth will return. It's not a quick fix. Voters must wait. Andy Haldane, the Bank of England's former chief economist, urges Labour to have an understandable 'people strategy' and more power for the regions and nations to give voters hope while the investment arrives. Because we are not a patient lot, and that is what Reform preys on. Haldane told the Guardian: 'Nigel Farage is as close to what the country has to a tribune for the working classes. I don't think there's any politician that comes even remotely close to speaking to, and for, blue-collar, working-class Britain. I think that is just a statement of fact…' Well, if so, isn't it an extraordinary one? Farage, an ex-City trader from the suburban south, is more of a tribune than Rayner, Phillipson, Streeting or Reed, who grew up in council housing and on benefits? Able to speak to working people in a way that the government, 92 per cent of whose ministers attended comprehensive schools, can't? This points to a familiar but catastrophic problem – the strange inability of this Labour government to communicate its cause vividly. By investing wisely, it can bring growth and therefore better times, but meanwhile it needs the fire of a Kinnock, the moral weight of a Brown, the birds-from-trees persuasiveness of a Blair. Yet too often, all we hear are wooden tongues. The lessons of the past fortnight are twofold. First, the right-wing populist insurgency, both in America and here, is fragile, not omnipotent. As the Musk episode reminds us, there is a difference between radical protest and traditional conservative thinking, particularly on the role of the state. Any coalition big enough to overwhelm social democracy can come apart quickly when personalities go to war. Although they sometimes run in parallel, American politics and British politics, Brobdingnag and Lilliput, remain different in structure, electoral make-up and rhythm. One must be cautious about those equal signs: the quick peace deal between Yusuf and Farage showed a sense lacking in Washington. Still, the mocking liberal laughter wasn't all ridiculous. But the second lesson is that, even with a plausible growth strategy, social democracy needs brilliant storytellers to keep a tired and sceptical electorate onside. This is a long fight. Starmer and Reeves are in it for years to come. But they have to become far better communicators. Nigel Farage, after all, is a man used to having the last, loud laugh. [See more: Reform needs Zia Yusuf] Related

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store