American rock star Dave Matthews has mocked Donald Trump’s ego, suggesting that the US President is like “a budgie looking in the mirror and seeing a lion”.
The Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter said Trump had been “so coddled” he had become incapable of “thinking rationally”.
The Dave Matthews Band is due to play two UK dates at the Eventim Apollo, London, in March as part of a European tour.
Matthews, 52, said he doubted whether Trump was capable of giving a straight answer, even if he was being tortured by waterboarding.
He told the Press Association: “At least for now, I have come to this place where I think that he has been so coddled and so nurtured and has stumbled – with a semi-handsome face – into a position of some strange version of power, that I think he is incapable of thinking rationally.
“I think it is beyond him. I think it is impossible for him to think rationally. I think it is impossible for him to learn anything.
“I think if he was being waterboarded you couldn’t get a qualified answer out of him. He’s like a budgie looking in the mirror and seeing a lion.”
Matthews, who was born in Johannesburg and raised between the US, the UK and South Africa, is known for his views on environmental conservation and politics.
In 2016 he played at a rally for then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Matthews said Trump was the result of a deep-rooted dissatisfaction felt by the American voting public and that he found his lack of empathy bewildering.
He said: “I’m trying to define in some way what Trump represents and I think that he’s a result of a lack of education, of an ignorance and a frustration that is happening in this country.
“On a personal level, towards him, how someone can be alive now and be in a position of power and be so absolutely irresponsible and be so uncaring and so disinterested in finding out any version of the truth?”
The Dave Matthews Band will play at the Eventim Apollo in London on March 12 and 13.