Donald Trump isn’t known for his love of classic British guitar band The Smiths — even though they have a song called “Bigmouth Strikes Again” that could be an ideal soundtrack for his planned return to the White House.
But a Smiths song — “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” — was played at a Trump rally in Rapid City, South Dakota on Tuesday, and at other Trump rallies recently, including in Laconia, New Hampshire on Monday.
That’s angered one of the song’s authors, Johnny Marr.
Marr replied to a tweet from the rally by saying: “Ahh…right…OK. I never in a million years would’ve thought this could come to pass. Consider this shit shut right down right now.”
This has happened to Marr before. In 2010, the guitarist called on then-U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to stop professing his love for the band. “Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t,” he wrote on Twitter (as it was called then), adding: “I forbid you to like it.”
There aren’t many musicians who do like Trump using their songs. In 2020, Neil Young sued Trump’s reelection campaign for doing just that (Young later dropped the case).
It’s not yet known what Morrissey — who co-founded The Smiths with Marr and who has veered sharply to the right since the end of the band — thinks about Trump using his music.
Morrissey’s increasingly right-ward pronouncements have caused many a Smiths fan to recoil in horror. In a 2013 magazine interview, he said: “I nearly voted for UKIP. I like Nigel Farage a great deal. His views are quite logical — especially where Europe is concerned.” He’s also called the Chinese a “subspecies” because of the country’s record on animal rights, and likened the mass murder carried out in Norway by Anders Breivik to the slaughter of animals for fast-food restaurants.
Notably, the Smiths song played at the Trump rally was not “This Charming Man.”
