More than 50 years since Gerald Casale co-founded Devo with the belief that mankind is devolving at a rapid pace, he’s commemorating America’s 250th anniversary this July 4 with a video for his new solo song “Just Do It!” that takes on the ultimate symbol of our decay: Donald Trump.
The animated video presents Trump as a dictator who leads an army of MAGA zombies, sucks money out of the country with a giant hose, smashes the Liberty Bell with a sledgehammer, watches the Statue of Liberty crumble, and runs over hordes of peaceful protestors in an ambulance. Things grow even more surreal when Jeffrey Epstein’s face appears in the sun, spoofing the Teletubbies, and Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and Steve Bannon take the place of Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Po, and Tinky-Winky. It ends with Trump and four of his MAGA zombies sinking into a red ocean alongside an ambulance labeled “Freedom.”
“I had the idea for the lyrics and concept since Trump’s first term in 2016,” Casale tells Rolling Stone. “It was obvious then he was an anti-democracy tyrant. Since his return in 2024, he has grown exponentially unhinged.”
Casale co-wrote “Just Do It!” using instrumental tracks that Czech musician Moimir Papalescu of the group Die alten Maschinen provided to him. He reordered it between Devo concert dates in late 2025 with Devo’s Josh Hager on guitar and keyboards, and Jeff Friedl on drums.
He couldn’t resist dropping it on Independence Day. “July 4th, 2026 is the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of the King of England,” he says. “So America is now celebrating its freedom under the rule of a homegrown dictator. The irony was too sweet to pass up.”
The script for the video was written by Casale and his longtime friend Max Papeschi, an Italian satirical artist. “He created the artwork and character designs which were then animated by his collaborator Maurizio Temporin,” says Casale. “They used Adobe Photoshop, motion-controlled animation, Adobe After Effects compositing, and selectively deployed minimal AI-enhanced tools for some specific transitions and 3D elements.”
“Just Do It!” is the first track that Casale is sharing from his upcoming full-length solo album, Wetiko. “I won’t bother you by elaborating on the heft of that title,” he says, “but for anyone interested, please Google the word and it becomes crystal clear why I chose it as my album title, and title song.”
There have been very mainstream Trump songs over the past decade, but this doesn’t surprise Casale one bit. “We live in a world where facts don’t matter and the electorate is resigned to being able to get their morning Frappuccinos on the way to their often gruesome jobs,” he says. “The spirit of fighting for democracy is broken.”
“We were definitely canaries in a coal mine,” he adds. “But what has happened here far surpasses our worst prognostications. Idiocracy, a more than 20-year-old dystopian, sci-fi movie that Devo should have made, is now a documentary.”
He has little hope for the future that things will eventually turn around and his grandkids will inherit a better world than this one. “Given the predictability of human nature I wager we will scratch our way back to square one eventually,” he says. “If not, then there will be no grandkids living on Earth. Maybe they will be living in hell on Mars under Musk’s private corporate world. At any rate, I can see that I will spend my last chapter trying to retain my memory of better times in the sweet spot window of the mid-century to late-century cultural/creative explosion and opportunity. Now it’s as Orwell predicted: the boot of tyranny stomping on the face of humanity.”
That doesn’t mean he’s sitting back and waiting for everything to collapse. Over the past three years, Devo have dramatically upped their touring activity after being mostly inactive between 2015 and 2023. They just finished a U.S. tour, dates in England with the B-52s, and they’re hitting the road with Billy Idol this summer before another run with the B-52s in the fall.
It’s the most road work they’ve done in a single year since the 1980s. “It was a case of ‘now or never,” says Casale. “Devo are senior citizens now but we have remained relevant due to the conceptual/philosophical foundations underpinning our body of work. Devo was never really about style. It was about ideas and substance. So we have become the ‘New Wave Grateful Dead’ as I like to joke about. Our live shows attract our original fans, their children, and their children’s children. Our best work has withstood the test of time and it’s heartening.”
There are no firm plans for the future, but many things are under consideration. “Hopefully some plans will come to fruition,” says Casale. “They include a groundbreaking video game with a live music component, a graphic novel based on a full-length feature-film concept where Devo goes through a wormhole in 1984 into an alternate universe, and a limited performance run of concerts with a symphony orchestra.”
