During a recent interview with Yahoo! Entertainment‘s Lyndsey Parker, TWISTED SISTER frontman Dee Snider was asked if he has any intention of ever going into politics. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Many, many people asked me [that same question]. I got a call from a guy who said, ‘Listen, I’m not asking. I’m telling. This influential person said, ‘I’m starting a Super PAC,'” he said, referencing the political committee that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives or legislation. “I said, ‘No. Thank you. I appreciate it.’ He said, ‘I’m not asking. I’m doing this.’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ”Cause I’ve seen the job. It’s terrible. These people are terrible people. They’re self-serving. They’ve got agendas. They’re not looking for the greater good.’ And the people who have actually gone in with genuine… Like Jimmy Carter, just a really decent human being, got destroyer. He got chewed up and spit out by Washington. There’s no place for a fair, honorable, decent, reasonable person. Nobody wants the voice of reason; they want the voice of insanity. And if I can tell you this, the loudest voices in the room are the extremes on the left and the right, and they are the smallest percentages.
“Most of us are somewhere in the middle,” Dee explained. “And these are the phrases that get used: ‘I’m sure it’ll work out’; ‘I trust things will be okay’; ‘It usually comes back to center.’ We’ve got all these sort of, like, ‘Things will be okay in the end.’ And as Dr. Phil says, ‘How’s that working out for ya?’
“The vast majority of people have been too willing to sit back and hope for the best while the extremes on the left and right are using that silence that we have to just try and control things. No. Push back, fight back, don’t shut up. Tell these idiots to shut up.”
Asked if he is feeling a little better about the state of the world in 2021 now that Donald Trump is no longer president, Snider said: “Well, not having a lunatic driving a bus is a great thing. But the fact of the matter is that lunatic is still in the bus; he’s just moved into the back seat. So he’s back there causing problems. You remember the bus, people. The troublemakers in the back? Yeah, they’re still in there.
“The biggest favor that Trump did… And it’s just… There’s what’s his name over there, Boris [Johnson] in England, with Brexit, in Brazil… They’re all over the world. There’s Trumps [all over the world]. They keep referring to it as ‘Australia’s Trump,’ ‘the U.K.’s Trump.’ Everybody’s got a Trump. But the favor they did us is that they got these awful people to come out of the shadows. ‘We thought we had a black president. Everything’s okay.’ No. It’s not. So now they’re out of the shadows, or if they slink back, now we know they’re there.
“So, no, I don’t think it’s better,” he added. “I think they’ve just been forced out of the forefront for a little bit, but don’t fool yourself people — they’re there. They’re going nowhere. They were hiding. They were biding their time. They were waiting. And when they finally got someone that spoke [to them], that they felt it was cool to come out and expose themselves, they did. So, just know full well they’re still there and you’ve just gotta stay vigilant.”
Snider found himself in the middle of controversy in 2016 when he asked Trump to stop using the 1984 TWISTED SISTER anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in his campaign.
Dee, who got to know Trump personally after appearing more than once on “The Celebrity Apprentice”, had been an outspoken critic of America’s 45th president, tweeting incessantly against Trump‘s administration and blasting Trump as “a commie-loving traitor” who is prostituting our democracy. He has also engaged in heated Twitter fights with Trump followers, some of whom had taken issue with his colorful delivery and unapologetic tone.
Last year, Snider criticized Trump over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, saying that Trump‘s response to COVID-19 had been “to politicize it and separate us more and make it about politics instead of about joining together and helping each other. This was an opportunity to really bring the country together over something really important, that rises above all the other B.S. in the world,” he said. “And he failed to do that, and we’re seeing the results.”
In eary September, Snider defended his “aggressive and intense” approach in dealing with “idiot Trump followers” on social media, saying that he was “trying to lead by example.”
