Arcade Fire’s Win Butler Slams Donald Trump for Calling Haiti a ‘S—hole’
President Donald Trump's remarks about Haitians yesterday (Jan. 11) have been predictably met with a backlash from Win Butler of Arcade Fire. Today, Butler tweeted about his love for Haiti and called Trump a racist.
"Trump's comments about Haiti," Butler wrote, "reflect nothing on the amazing country, and only on his own racism and xenophobia. Haiti is one of the most special and amazing places I've been on this earth, and we need more Haitian-Americans."
Arcade Fire's connection to Haiti runs deep. Butler's wife, Arcade Fire member Regine Chassagne, is of Haitian descent and the band has been involved in many humanitarian efforts in Haiti. In 2016, Arcade Fire received the 2016 Allan Waters Humanitarian Award at the Juno Awards in recognition for having raised $9.6 million to help the people of Haiti. Chassagne also helped create the KNAPE Foundation, which helps rural families in Haiti become financially independent and escape poverty. Since 2006, they've donated $1 from every concert ticket sold to Partners in Health, a non-profit that provides healthcare to impoverished communities around the world, beginning with a clinic in Cange, Haiti in 1985.
Yesterday, President Trump was quoted in a meeting about immigration policy as saying: “Why are we having all these people from s---hole countries come here? ... Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.”
In other anti-Trump news, Moby said friends of his in the intelligence community have said Trump is in the pocket of the Russian government. “They were like, ‘This is the Manchurian Candidate, like [Putin] has a Russian agent as the President of the United States,’" he said in an interview with Kyle Meredith of Louisville's WFPK (as reported by Consequence of Sound and embedded below).
"To what extent there’s collusion, I don’t know, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and when you have so much evidence pointing to the fact that the Trump administration is really in bed with the Russians in a very pernicious way," Moby added. "It’s really disturbing and it’s going to get quite a lot darker. Like the depths of the Trump family in business and their involvement with organized crime, sponsored terrorism, Russian oligarchs, it’s really dark. I guess we should all just fasten our seat belts and hold on."
The words echo comments made by Moby a year ago, shortly after Trump's inauguration.
Listen to Moby Discuss President Trump and Russia