Dave Matthews slammed the Trump administration and ICE in the aftermath of the Renee Nicole Good shooting in Minneapolis, “I don’t like these monsters that are running the show right now.”
In the lengthy video messaged posted on Dave Matthews Band’s official social channels, and recorded on the singer’s birthday Friday, the South Africa-born Matthews opened by saying how “grateful” he was for his community and neighbors. “I think about how lucky I’ve been in my life, here in this land. And so, then I think about the way I repay it, and the way I repay it is with taxes. They can raise my taxes, as far as I’m concerned,” Matthews said.
“But — big but, big juicy but — that’s if they spend my taxes on bridges and the national parks and maintaining the highways, the libraries, raising the minimum wage, paying nurses, free university for people who can’t afford it, free healthcare, things that are reasonable. School lunches for god’s sakes.”
Matthews then unloaded on what his tax dollars shouldn’t be used for. “I don’t want my taxes to go toward invading foreign countries over false premises, kidnapping presidents to steal their natural resources and threatening to do it to other countries, claiming somehow sovereign nations belong to us,” Matthews said, calling the current administration “entitled and revolting.”
“I don’t want my taxes to pay for ICE, to masked thugs to roam our streets and terrorize our communities and rip families apart. We should be taking care of each other. We should be minding each other. We should be housing the homeless. We shouldn’t be, you know, throwing people to the ground.”
The singer then spoke about Good, the 37-year-old woman who was shot and killed by a masked ICE agent earlier this week, and the Trump administration’s response to the shooting.
“Which brings me to Renee Nicole Good. Murdered in front of her fellow citizens in Minneapolis, murdered in the streets. And no matter what narrative this administration is trying to sell us, we can see the videos,” Matthews said.
“Maybe if they show you one and they slow it down and they tell you where to look, you might think, maybe there’s a chance, maybe there’s a chance that the gunman was felt threatened. But from most angles, near and far, it looks like she was trying to get away, and he shot her three times in the head, murdered in cold blood.”
The singer continued, “This administration, these people who are trying to tell us not to believe what we see. It is so horrific. I don’t understand how you can claim that [Good] was ramming their cars, or that she was attacking them. There’s nothing to suggest that. And it’s mind-boggling and it’s deeply upsetting. To me and to so many people, and we can’t just let it slide.”
Matthews then named high-ranking members of the Trump administration and called them all “just deeply, deeply dishonest people. Cowardly, shameful. Fuck them. They are revolting.” He then closed out his video message by voicing the sentiment shared by other artists following Good’s death, “These are dark times. Fuck ICE.”
