Music

Slayer distance themselves from singer Tom Araya's pro-Trump post

by Jeremy Mersereau

Never a band to skirt controversy, Slayer’s official Instagram posted a Photoshopped image of the band with the newly-inaugurated Donald Trump last week. “I never would have guessed that there where so many snowflakes commenting their distaste for the new president. Like him or not he is the president,” the caption from Tom Araya originally read, before the post was deleted wholesale from the band’s Instagram.

While a pro-Trump social media post that uses the term “snowflakes” is always going to be controversial, there was also this indefensible nugget in the comments from the original post, presumably referring to Mike Pence’s past support of gay conversion therapy:

Classy. The public outcry led to the post being deleted ,but now, the image has been re-posted, with a message from Araya saying that he “woke up the next morning and found someone had deleted the post … Can someone please explain why…?”

Believe it or not this picture was posted by me Tom Araya on 1/20 cause I thought it was funny … I was amazed at the comments about the picture some positive some negative more amazing was in 2 hours there was 10,000 likes … But i never would have guessed that there where so many snowflakes commenting their distaste for the new president. Like him or not he is the president … woke up the next morning and found someone had deleted the post … can some one please explain why…?

A photo posted by Slayer (@slayerbandofficial) on Jan 24, 2017 at 12:54pm PST

For their part, the other members of Slayer have distanced themselves from Araya’s pro-Trump stance. “As was verified by Tom, this was his post, is not something the band would have posted if asked, and does not belong on a Slayer social page,” the band told Rolling Stone. “We all have our personal opinions, some of which we have voiced in the past, but Slayer has never endorsed any political party or any candidate, and the band intends to keep it that way”.

Case in point: last year, Slayer guitarist Kerry King called Trump “just a sideshow” and said Hillary Clinton was the “safe, correct choice” in an interview last summer. Something tells me Slayer are probably going to have to institute a ‘no political discussion’ rule on their upcoming tours.

[H/T Rolling Stone]