It does not come as a surprise that Eminem has his political opinion, and it is strong, passionate and can be boiled down to “Fuck Trump”.
From the very beginning, Marshall has been fully aware of what he was doing. He was holding a mirror in front of the ugly face of modern society and did not let it to look away.
Eminem’s first overtly political statement can be traced back to 2002 when he released “The Eminem Show”. His main articulated concern on “White America” was rampant censorship (“I musta struck a chord with somebody up in the office / ‘Cause Congress keep tellin’ me I ain’t causin’ nothin’ but problems”), and his dissent was reinforced in the visual to the song, where he ripped apart the US Constitution. Marshall stood up against George W. Bush and the war his administration had instigated.
Eminem was mistaken for his characters so many times, so he never bothered to explain the distinction. What bothers him is inequality, racism, exploitation, hypocrisy and societal fascination with fame, money and success. The things that Donald Trump triumphantly embodies.
So when Trump started encroaching on big politics, Eminem said his decisive “nope”.
During 2016 presidential campaign, Marshall dropped a 7-minute freestyle “Campaign Speech” – a fiery social and political talk where Em specified his views on the unexpected presidential candidate:
Consider me a dangerous man
But you should be afraid of this dang candidate
You say Trump don’t kiss ass like a puppet
‘Cause he runs his campaign with his own cash for the fundin’
And that’s what you wanted
A fuckin’ loose cannon who’s blunt with his hand on the button
Who doesn’t have to answer to no one — great idea!
Enough people thought that it was a great idea to make Trump the 45th president later that year, which had not stopped Marshall from dissing him again. This time he dropped “Trump’s a bitch, I’ll make his whole brand go under” on Big Sean’s “No Favors” released in February 2017.
That summer, Eminem was touring the UK and took this opportunity to make his views known again. In three cities he led crowds of thousands to chant “Fuck Trump!” with him.
While wearing a “Fack Trump” T-shirt at the Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, Scotland, he told the crowd:
“Scotland, you might have to be our new home because right now shit ain’t going so well in the States. I just wanna take this moment out right now and say motherfuck Donald Trump”.
Marshall’s next appearance was at the Reading Festival in England, and he again addressed the audience:
“I don’t want to cause any controversy, so I won’t say no names but this motherfucker Donald Trump, I can’t stand. So before we get into this next song, we would like to request something of you. When I say ‘Fuck’, you say ‘Trump’”.
90,000 fans were chanting “Fuck Trump!” at the top of their lungs.
The story was repeated at Leeds Festival with resounding success.
However, the most visceral and eloquent Marshall’s attack at Trump was on 2017 BET cypher “The Storm”. Over 4 minutes of the methodical evisceration of Trump’s moral stance, political decisions, financial policies, racists statements, tweet tantrums and more. “The Storm” had power than not many were familiar with before and stole praise from many of Marshall’s fellow hip hop legends.
“Revival”, the album Eminem released after these events, was probably the most politically charged out of all his catalogue to date. Marshall even posed with an American flag for its cover, and he did not look cheerful, as was not his outlook at the American politics.
Later in his Billboard interview Marshall reflected on the 2016 election and its outcome:
I called it just from the rallies he was having when he first started running. Because just watching the impact he has, they were fanatics. There is something to be said about the person who really felt like he might do something for them – and he just fucking duped everybody. I know that Hillary [Clinton] had her flaws, but you know what? Anything would have been better [than Trump].
I get the comparison with the non-political-correctness, but other than that, we’re polar opposites. He made these people feel like he was really going to do something for them. It’s just so fucking disgusting how divisive his language is, the rhetoric, the Charlottesville shit, just watching it going, “I can’t believe he’s saying this.” When he was talking about John McCain, I thought he was done. You’re fucking with military veterans, you’re talking about a military war hero who was captured and tortured. It just didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And that’s some scary shit to me.
Eminem’s open political position led to him being investigated by Secret Service. They tried to interpret his bars as “threatening comments towards POTUS and his family”. Uncovered in 2019 secret documents revealed that Marshall was interviewed by agents and took this opportunity to rap a verse from “Framed” in their faces:
Donald Duck’s on, there’s a Tonka Truck in the yard
But dog, how the fuck is Ivanka Trump in the trunk of my car?
Gotta get to the bottom of it to try to solve it
Must go above and beyond, ’cause it’s incumbent upon me
Plus I feel somewhat responsible for the dumb little blonde
Girl, that motherfuckin’ baton twirler that got dumped in the pond
Second murder with no recollection of it.
One of the evidence in the case against Marshall was his interview with “Vulture” that was supposed to demonstrate Em’s “hatred” of Trump. This is the paragraph that evoked such concerns:
He makes my blood boil. I can’t even watch the news anymore because it makes me too stressed out. All jokes aside, all punch lines aside, I’m trying to get a message out there about him. I want our country to be great too, I want it to be the best it can be, but it’s not going to be that with him in charge. I remember when he was first sniffing around politics, I thought, We’ve tried everything else, why not him? Then — and I was watching it live — he had that speech where he said Mexico is sending us rapists and criminals. I got this feeling of what the fuck? From that point on, I knew it was going to be bad with him. What he’s doing putting people against each other is scary fucking shit. His election was such a disappointment to me about the state of the country.
Eminem revealed the story about this failed investigation on his surprise 2018 album “Kamikaze” that also presented its fair share of insults to Agent Orange. Somebody counted that in 2017-2018 Em dissed Trump 44 times.
Some of Marshall’s opponents like to insinuate that his fanbase is predominantly white and supports Trump. Without discussing how far it is from the truth, ask yourself whether Eminem was concerned to lose them when he made his political opposition to Trump known. Here is the answer:
When I [put out “The Storm”], I felt that everybody who was with him at that point doesn’t like my music anyway.
At the end of the day, if I did lose half my fan base, then so be it, because I feel like I stood up for what was right and I’m on the right side of this. I don’t see how somebody could be middle class, busting their ass every single day, paycheck to paycheck, who thinks that that fucking billionaire is gonna help you.
