During a recent appearance on “The God Show“, punk rock icon Henry Rollins delivered a blistering critique of Donald Trump‘s decision to initiate a war with Iran. The veteran musician and spoken-word artist condemned the conflict as a severe strategic miscalculation, criticizing both the administration for its lack of foresight and the media for downplaying the true human cost of the situation.
Rollins expressed his deep frustration over the lack of focus on the American casualties resulting from the military action, emphasizing that the loss of life overshadows the economic inconveniences dominating the news cycle.
“I’m an American. We all have opinions… The thing that really bugs me about what’s going on right now is the president definitely has me distracted. Congress, the Supreme Court, I think they’re not doing their jobs. The thing that bugs me the most is how the media is not really addressing this awful experience we’re having — a war in Iran. And I think the ramifications of this are bigger than what the media is hinting at,” Rollins stated (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
“A lot of Americans understand higher gas prices… I drove to the gym the other day. It was $3.99 for gas. But dig it, the next morning it was $4.29. It went up 30 cents while I got my nine minutes of sleep. And so this pain will continue. So a lot of Americans are experiencing pain at the pump and pain at the grocery store. But a bigger deal, for me at least, and that’s no small deal, but for me, the biggest deal for me, and the president is too cowardly to admit it, Pete Hegseth is too cowardly and ill-informed and not wise enough to admit it, it’s a number, and the number is 14, and that is 14 dead American service personnel. So these are 14 men and women, some of America’s finest, have been sent to their deaths. So blood is all over the White House. The president is dipped in it, Pete Hegseth is dipped in it, and Congress is dipped in it, and anyone who’s not yelling that number and reminding everyone that 14 amazing Americans have died, and hundreds more injured — and there’s no details on the injury,” he continued.
Drawing on his extensive history of performing for U.S. troops on USO tours and visiting wounded veterans at military hospitals, Rollins provided a sobering perspective on the lasting physical and emotional trauma of war.
“Many years ago I used to do a lot of work for the USO… When I was doing USO work, I was in Iraq and Afghanistan and places like that. But I also did a lot of visits to Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital, where I’d meet young men. I didn’t meet any women — all young men. Arms gone, legs gone, part of their guts gone, parts of their brains gone — [in the] traumatic-brain-injury ward. And you see these amazing young people, a fraction my age, who are going to be challenged for the rest of their lives. Their moms are in the room, and they’re running around the room like a nervous bird, clumping the pillow. Like, ‘He’s doing better every day.’ And you’re, like, ‘Ma’am, his leg’s been gone. He’s not doing better. It is what it is.’ And so you see these amazing young people disfigured for life, and then it gets even worse with a traumatic brain injury. And so we do not know the nature of the injuries of these amazing men and women. We’re just told ‘injuries’. And so what I’m saying is from my tiny experience with this, an injury can be anything from an amputation to the frontal part of the brain gone, to a jaw gone, eye, nose, whatever. And so we’re not being told a lot. And I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m just saying they’re going over a lot of the details to give us happy talk about all of this. And so a ballroom is just merely insulting. That’s some Marie Antoinette stuff,” he explained.
Rollins directly attacked Donald Trump‘s historical and geographical understanding of the region, arguing that the administration ignored decades of complex history between the U.S. and Iran.
“And so if it’s World War II and you’re battling Hitler, okay. He’s gotta be stopped. But this war was started by a guy who doesn’t know his geography, does not know the history of Iran and the United States — and there’s a long one. There’s a long history… He doesn’t understand Operation Ajax and the overthrow of Mosaddegh, the early days of the CIA. There’s a lot to know. And all those generals, they know this stuff. They’re war historians. And why any of them haven’t sat the president down before this and said, ‘Sir, not this one.’ … And so Trump says, ‘I’m the only one who had the guts to do it.’ All the presidents before you were all way more intelligent, and they didn’t go in because of Strait Of Hormuz, the geography of Iran.”
Having personally traveled to Tehran as a solitary traveler, the former Black Flag and Rollins Band frontman reflected on the logistical nightmare of a ground invasion and praised the Iranian citizens, firmly separating the populace from their government’s actions.
“When I went [to Iran] years ago, I flew to Dubai. I got a visa in 90 minutes, and the next day I was in Tehran. I just went for it. And so I got a visa, got to Tehran. And I had to have a government spy drive me around. You pay him, ’cause you get the propaganda tour. And he said, ‘It’s very hard to invade Iran ’cause we’re very tall and we’re very long.’ I said, ‘I love that. Well, what does that mean?’ ‘We have high mountains and a lot of flat land, so if you get over the mountains, we’ll see you, and we got a lot of time to kill you. So if you want to put the proverbial boots on the ground, American forces will pay.’ And so as this thing gets worse and worse, the president, instead of admitting he was wrong, which he seems incapable of doing, if he is sadly insane enough to put boots on the ground, you could have a casualty rate that skyrockets — for no good reason.”
“Iran, the people are great. The people I met were amazing. Good people, bad government. That’s North Korea. I was there too,” Rollins clarified. “Well, just like a lot of places. A lot of countries in Africa… I’ve done, like, 21 trips to the African continent. I’ve met the most heartbreakingly generous, wonderful, wonderful people. Their government is obscene. They’re horrible. Easily, easily bought off. And so the government is one thing, the people are another.”
Shifting his focus to domestic issues, Rollins condemned the administration’s frivolous spending, contrasting the government’s budget priorities with the harsh financial struggles of everyday Americans bracing for the long-term economic fallout of the conflict.
“I don’t think anybody in the media… And I’m no expert. I’m barely a high school graduate, but I pay attention to things and I read. I just think this Iran, whatever you wanna call it, it’s gonna be a disaster that is not being reported to the American people and the world as the catastrophe that it truly is. And this is the thing that occupies my thoughts more than the insult of a billion dollars for a stupid ballroom, more than the destruction of the Rose Garden. We can’t have anything nice. Jacqueline Kennedy built this beautiful rose garden, and this guy covers it with cement? I mean, it’s like one of the last vestiges of the White House where you can go, like, ‘Wow.'”
He concluded: “I’ve never heard an administration throw a billion dollars around like it’s a party favor. Like it’s a souvenir… They just go, like, ‘Yeah, we need $20 billion for this. We need a billion for that. Oh, my airplane’s gonna cost this many…’ This ‘B’ word gets thrown around, and then real Americans who work for a living, they go to Lowe’s, and they put an apron on, and they work all day until their feet are swollen. And they drive through traffic in their crap car back to their home, looking at gas prices, looking at their mortgage, three kids, daycare, wife — everything is uncertain, and this guy isn’t helping. And Americans have never felt the consequence of being broke because America just kicks that fiscal can down the road. But in our lifetime, I think at some point the pain Americans are feeling now, I think this is the trailer for the epic disaster film that’s coming. Because if you ask the experts, they go, ‘Look, you could open the Strait Of Hormuz right now,’ gas prices are gonna keep going up at least another three quarters. And so when prices go up, companies that have the control are very loathe to lower them ’cause they got you for $4.10… Why would they lower it? Like, what are you gonna do? Not put gas in your truck and go to the construction site? They gotcha. And these people, at the end of the day, are really mean. They’re mean. And they’re greedy.”
