Corey Taylor Previews ‘America 51’ Book With Trump Takedown
Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor has dedicated roughly one-third of his upcoming book, America 51, to his derision for President Donald Trump. “There’s a reason that the new Stone Sour album doesn’t have any political shit on it: It all went in the book,” he tells Rolling Stone, referring to the band’s upcoming album Hydrograd. “And what I wrote is fucking brutal.”
During the election cycle, Taylor had told Rolling Stone he was bothered by people taking Trump seriously and was angered by the “base, ugly bigotry and racism” Trump was promoting. America 51, out August 8th, is subtitled A Probe into the Realities That Are Hiding Inside “The Greatest Country in the World,” with its publisher describing it as a reflection of how touring with bands has taught him “what it means to be an American in an increasingly unstable world.”
“It’s really fucking unfortunate how bad we have just fucked ourselves into an embarrassing … Did you see what he did with the members of the U.N.? Did you see him shove the dude?” Taylor says, referring to the incident last month where Trump appeared to push aside the prime minister of Montenegro to get to the front of a photo op. “I’m like, ‘Ugh, you petty, petulant cunt. Would you just fucking get impeached already?’
“It is embarrassing that he is the ‘leader of the free world,'” he continues. “I will never give him the qualification for that shit. He can’t go away fast enough. And I think people are really starting to see that. His approval rating is at 39 percent in a lot of places. Was there a reason you wiped your ass with your fucking vote, you bunch of dickheads? Good for you.”
Trump, he says, is present in every chapter of the book – but there’s no chapter dedicated specifically to the president. “He’s peppered in all the time because I go off on fucking tangents,” Taylor says. “A lot of it has to do with the culture divide. We’re on so many different pages socially, we’ve given to extremes. Why can’t we come to the center, where most of us are, and be able to talk? Instead, we put our backs against the wall and scream at each other. The book is me standing in the middle going, ‘You’re all fucked. If you could get a little closer to each other, you’d not only see that you could talk instead of yell, you’d have more in common than you realize. Until that moment happens, it’s gonna be a fucking nightmare.'”
Taylor championed Bernie Sanders during the election cycle, because he liked the senator’s platforms, but he did not like how hardline and extreme many Sanders supporters were. He also thinks people didn’t give Hillary Clinton a fair shot for that same reason. “Why does it have to be so fucking divisive?” he says. “It’s one of the reasons why Hillary’s campaign shot itself in the foot. Never mind the fact that people just didn’t like her for no real good reason. With the nightmare that we have going on right now, Hillary would be like a fucking godsend, and nobody wants to fucking admit that. They want to talk about her e-mails and Benghazi, all this fucking bullshit. It’s like, ‘Dude, shove that shit straight up your fucking dumbass. Are you kidding?'”
“I’ve had a little pushback [from fans], but only from people who masturbate to Lee Greenwood songs.”
Taylor says he hasn’t seen much fallout from fans of his bands over his outspoken political views. “I’ve had a little pushback, but only from people who masturbate to Lee Greenwood songs,” he says. “Our country is not perfect, and I refuse to stand and give that credence any bullshit. It’s not true. Yet these people think that there are no flaws in it. If you can’t at least admit that there are issues, how the fuck are you gonna fix the issue?”
He chalks up the lack of fan resistance to being consistent and staying centrist. “I am a socially liberal and yet fiscally conservative guy,” he says. “So I can hang with almost everybody. I think if you ask people that, they will absolutely be right on that center line, whether it’s the socially liberal or the fiscally conservative. People agree with all of that. But it’s only when the politicians themselves start whipping frenzies up and trying to get the base all knocked up on fervor that people stop listening to their inner dialogue, or listening to their common sense, and they immediately lock into that battle. It’s such bullshit. If we all were talking to each other instead of listening to that bullshit in the first place, we would be able to take the power away from them and put it back where it belongs.”
Taylor also discussed Stone Sour’s upcoming LP, Hydrograd – due out June 30th – with Rolling Stone. The full interview will be published soon.