In recent months, Neil Young has practically made laying into Donald Trump his day job. And that most important work continues this week as the legendary rocker blasts the president with a new open letter via his official website.
Titled “It’s ICE Cold Here in America,” the editorial comes in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Young calls this unprecedented moment “the biggest mess I’ve ever witnessed” before urging people to “wake up…the USA is a disaster.”
The cause of this wholesale destruction is, of course, Trump himself, who has ruined America with his “staff of wannabees, people with no experience or talent, closet alcoholic wife beaters [sic], inexperienced leaders who only know how to lie to keep favor with the Trump falseness…,” Young contends. The legend musician goes on to ponder as to how exactly we elected “these creeps who have no spine, no values, no conscience, no way to save the USA.”
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From there, Young wonders how Trump actually intends to “Make America Great Again” when he is actively “trying to turn our cities into battlegrounds so he can cancel elections with marshal [sic] law and escape all accountability.”
It’s all very much in line with Young’s other rallying cries against the president. Sometimes those protests come in the form of music/music videos, including the recent “as time explodes” and “Big Crime.” Other times, his anger takes the form of other letters and statements, including inviting Trump to his 2025 summer tour “if there is not martial law by then,” or simply telling the president “I’m not scared of you. Neither are the rest of us.” This past fall, Young even pulled his music from Amazon because “[Jeff] Bezos supports this government, it does not support you or me.”
For all his anger and vitriol, though, Young did end the short but robust letter with something genuinely inspiring and hopeful: “Rise up. Peacefully in millions. Use your love of life, your love of one another…”
Read Young’s full letter here. Below, revisit the especially stirring “Big Crime.”
