Although many celebrities have created a cottage industry out of publicly bashing President-elect Donald Trump, Kiss co-founder/frontman and business entrepreneur Gene Simmons is not among them.
In an appearance this week on the Fox Business Network, the iconic rock star told his fellow entertainment industry colleagues to stop whining (“shut their pie hole”) about Trump’s electoral college landslide win over Hillary Clinton, and that the media should be paying no attention to their uninformed complaining in the first place.
“In simple terms…everybody should just take a big, deep breath and why anybody…would, in the fifth estate, would care what a celebrity thinks or otherwise is the height of foolishness…America’s finally come to the edges of the brink of insanity where some people might even consider it a good idea for people living in Malibu to decide our foreign policy. I’m not one of those. I think celebrities should basically shut their pie hole and do what they do best — act, sing, tap dance, juggle balls, and do all that kind of stuff.”
Calling attention to news reports that indicated that many anti-Trump street protesters never bothered to vote on Election Day, Simmons added that “Here we are: President-elect Trump is the president. You can like it, you cannot like it. He’s the new president; that’s the end of the story.”
See video clip embedded below.
“Simmons’ words for celebrity involvement in politics may have been harsh. But considering that Hillary Clinton’s over-reliance on celebs in swing states may have hurt her in the final weeks of the election, it may be beneficial for some of the stars to listen to the man,” LifeZette observed .
In the FBN interview, the bass guitarist also lauded the founding fathers for creating the electoral college and recommended that liberals/progressives who want the popular vote to be controlling to get to work on the process for amending the U.S. Constitution.
Back in the spring, while not endorsing Trump’s candidacy, Simmons described billionaire businessman and first-time candidate Trump as “the truest political animal I’ve ever seen onstage” and someone who has “changed politics forever.”
A one-time Celebrity Apprentice contestant, Simmons is no stranger to controversy himself and is well known for declining to hold his tongue, as it were, in disagreements over political correctness.
Commenting separately at the time on Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexican border, Simmons, who immigrated to the U.S. at age 8 from Israel with his mother, whose Hungarian family was murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, recalled that many countries around the world have erected walls at their border for security reasons, including the barriers around Vatican City .
Parenthetically, Donald Trump received the backing of Jesse James , Omarosa, Hershel Walker, Johnny Damon, Dennis Rodman, and possibly others who have interacted with the president-elect directly on the Celebrity Apprentice . Omarosa became one of Trump’s most prominent TV surrogates during the campaign.
In July 2014, Gene Simmons admitted that he’s been a member of the one percent for about 30 years and that “it’s fantastic” because one-percenters create all the jobs in the U.S. economy.
Gene Simmons and his Kiss bandmates were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2014.
In an interview with Task & Purpose , actor Mark Wahlberg, who is currently promoting Patriots Day , a film about the 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist bombing, similarly chided elitist celebrities for speaking out about politics.
“You know, it just goes to show you that people aren’t listening to that anyway. They might buy your CD or watch your movie, but you don’t put food on their table. You don’t pay their bills. A lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble. They’re pretty out of touch with the common person, the everyday guy out there providing for their family. Me, I’m very aware of the real world. I come from the real world and I exist in the real world. And although I can navigate Hollywood and I love the business and the opportunities it’s afforded me, I also understand what it’s like not to have all that.”
Do you agree with Gene Simmons that celebrities should keep their political opinions to themselves?
[Featured Image by Soren Andersson/AP Images]