When Trump on Wednesday announced KISS as a Kennedy Center Honoree, the president called the rock band’s founding members, including bassist and vocalist Gene Simmons, “incredible people.”
The feeling doesn’t seem entirely mutual, as the KISS frontman (whom Trump fired on his reality show The Apprentice in 2008), is a vocal critic of Trump’s influence on U.S. politics.
While Simmons recalls being “happy” Trump announced his candidacy in 2015—and, in April 2016, then-candidate Trump thanked the rock star for his favorable comments—KISS turned down an invitation to play at Trump’s first inauguration. “In this polarizing era, it’s not a good idea,” Simmons said.
The musician apparently began to sour on the president some time during his first term, specifically due to his election lies, culminating in the January 6 Capitol riot.
Simmons’s mentions of Trump on Twitter largely consist of links to news stories about the Big Lie and his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout January 2021, Simmons frequently engaged with users propagating Trump’s claims about election fraud—debunking them, calling them “misinformed,” and urging them to do more research on the matter.
In August 2021, he spoke to Yahoo! Entertainment, and the conversation drifted toward Trump: “Look, we all lie to some extent,” he said, “but what happened in the last four years was just beyond anything I ever thought imaginable for people who have lots of power—not just him, but the administration, everybody … all these QAnon people.”
Regarding the importance of speaking one’s mind, Simmons added, “In a political dialogue, if somebody spews complete fiction and QAnon stuff, you want to be able to have somebody who says, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? What, do you just shit in your diapers and forget to wipe it?’”
In May 2022, Simmons told Spin that Trump made America more polarized and “got all the cockroaches to rise to the top. Once upon a time, you were embarrassed to be publicly racist and out there with conspiracy theories. Now it’s all out in the open because he allowed it.
“I don’t think he’s a Republican or a Democrat,” Simmons, who endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012, continued. “He’s out for himself, any way you can get there. And in the last election, over 70 million people bought it hook, line and sinker.”
In a November 2022 interview with Bill Maher, Simmons agreed with Maher that Trump “doesn’t understand how government works and doesn’t care to learn.” These past criticisms aside, Simmons was grateful for Wednesday’s recognition: “We are deeply honored to receive the Kennedy Center Honor,” he told TMZ.
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