"Something has to change this. We know what to do. Rise up." One of rock music's most respected voices says that Donald Trump is "destroying America" with the support of "idiots with no conscience"

(Image credit: Kerem YUCEL / AFP via Getty Images)

Neil Young has called out US President Donald Trump for making America a "disaster", and called on US citizens to "rise up" in peaceful protests against his regime.

Young delivered his acerbic condemnation of Trump in an strongly-worded editorial piece on the Times Contrarian section of his website.

"Wake up, people!" he writes. "Today the USA is a disaster. Donald Trump is destroying America bit by bit with his staff of wannabes, people with no experience or talent, closet alcoholic wife beaters, inexperienced leaders who only know how to lie to keep favor with Trump’s falseness so they can hold their unearned positions in his inept government, a Congress full of Republicans acting like idiots with no conscience…He has divided us. How did we elect these creeps who have no spin, no values, no conscience, no way to save the USA.

"We need to take Trump at his word," he continues. "Make America Great Again. It won't be easy while he is trying to turn our cities into battlegrounds so he can cancel our elections with marshal law and escape all accountability…Something has to change this. We know what to do. Rise up. Peacefully in millions. Too many innocence [sic] people are dying.

"It’s ICE cold here in America. There was no ICE before Trump. No soldiers in the streets before Trump. Every move he makes is to build instability so he can stay in power.

"He knows nothing about love," Young concludes. "He does not know you are. Use your love of life, your love of one another, your love of children and theirs and ours. Peacefully. Now."

Wake up, people! Today the USA is a disaster. Donald Trump is destroying America
Neil Young

Young's editiorial follows on from another piece where he expressed his outrage at the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a US immigration agent in Minneapolis on January 7.

"This morning an ICE officer shot a woman in the face three times for no reason in Minneapolis," he wrote. "These ICE people do not operate like police. They are thugs. poor ID. Covered faces. Is ICE the new American Thug police?"

Young also hit out at the administration's controversial comments on taking over Greenland, and at the removal of women and people of colour from military leadership.

This is not the first time Young has condemned Donald Trump's presidency. Last August, the singer-songwriter released a track called Big Crime in which he offered a searing indictment of Trump's second term in the White House.

The lyrics for one section of the song run:

"Got to get the fascists out
Got to clean the White House out
Don’t want soldiers on our streets
There’s big crime in DC at the White House"

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts - Big Crime (chicago sound check) - (Official Video) - YouTube

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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