Roger Waters Clarifies Comments About Joe Biden
via CNN / Youtube
Roger Waters has clarified his recent comments about the current administration and labeling U.S. President Joe Biden a “criminal” for failing to prevent the Ukraine invasion from taking place.
In his current This Is Not a Drill tour, Waters had included an image of the President with the words “War Criminal” presented to the crowd. He addressed the image during a recent interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, saying that President Biden is “fueling the fire in Ukraine.” He added:
“That is a huge crime. Why won’t the United States of America encourage Zelenskyy, the President [of Ukraine] to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war that’s killing — we don’t know how many Ukrainians and Russians.
“This war is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border – which they promised they wouldn’t do when Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the U.S.S.R. from the whole of Eastern Europe,” he added. Waters later offered a comparison: “Try to figure out what the United States would do if the Chinese were putting nuclear armed missiles into Mexico and Canada.”
In the past, Waters had also criticized former President Donald Trump. He begins his current shows with a typescript message displayed to the audience that read:
“If you’re one of those ‘I love Pink Floyd but I can’t stand Roger’s politics’ people, you might do well to fuck off to the bar right now.”
He explained that the message “sets a few things straight” for what the audience is going to expect on his shows, both longtime fans and newer ones. Referencing lyrics from Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” he continued to CNN:
“I’ve only got one message: ‘Two strangers passing in the street / By chance two passing glances meet / And I am you and what I see is me.’
“That is my message and that was on Meddle, which was in 1970 – and basically my message hasn’t changed: I recognize your humanity but I recognize all the Russians and the Chinese and the Ukrainians and the Yemenis and the Palestinians.”
The rocker elaborated that the message doesn’t mean he wants people to leave his shows, but rather to encourage a sense of solidarity amongst his audience members. He added:
“There is such a great feeling of communication in that room between me and the audience,” he said, “and between us combined, with all of our brothers and sisters all over the rest of the world, irrespective of who they are, where they live, their ethnicity, their religion, their nationality, or anything else — because if This Is Not a Drill has a message, it is that we have to communicate one with the other.”
