6 Political Musings From Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has stoked outrage for suggesting at a concert in Singapore that President Obama was behind recent mass shootings at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. His reasoning? Obama wanted to drum up support for banning guns in America. Of course, this wasn’t Mustaine’s first foray into politics. Earlier this year, the rocker threw his support behind former Sen. Rick Santorum’s failed presidential bid. And, he’s not shy about expressing his feelings about the Obama administration. The Daily Beast runs down some of the rocker’s more colorful political comments.

Obama Was Behind Multiple Shooting Deaths

The way Mustaine tells it, the shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the earlier rampage at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., were both staged by President Obama as part of a complicated plot to force gun restrictions down the throats of the American public. “Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban,” Mustaine told his audience in Singapore. “So he's staging all of these murders, like the Fast and Furious thing down at the border and Aurora, Colo., all the people that were killed there. And now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple.” In the wake of the tragedies, Obama has indeed been gingerly broaching the hot topic of gun control, but he has stopped short of offering a specific plan. It’s still too much for Mustaine, who said, “I don't know where I'm gonna live if America keeps going the way it's going because it looks like it's turning into Nazi America.”

Obama Was Born in Kenya

Will birtherism ever die? Despite the release of the president’s long-form Hawaii birth certificate, rumors that Obama wasn’t born in the United States continue to persist. And Mustaine appears to buy into the speculation. The musician went on a Canadian talk show in March and said he had a lot of questions about Obama, but not any about where he was born. “I know he was born somewhere else than America,” said Mustaine. He doubled down in another interview in August. “Why hasn't somebody moved to impeach this man?” Mustaine demanded. “With all of the proof about his birth certificate being fake. And you see the signs in Kenya that say ‘the birthplace of Barack Obama.’ Hello?! C'mon, guys. How stupid are we right now?”

One World Government, One World Currency

Megadeth’s 12th studio album, Endgame, has a very important message behind it, according to Mustaine. “It's about educating our fans and showing them a little bit about what's going within the previous administration and that things haven't changed at all,” Mustaine said in 2009. “It's just more of people being run by the people who have the money.” But that’s not all the knowledge the album was meant to impart. “I believe that it's a one-world government, one-world currency,” the musician said. “It's part of the master plan. It's what I believe. I ascribed to that when I became a Christian. I know that there's gonna be a cataclysmic ramping up of all of these things we're seeing right now, and it gets worse and it gets worse and it gets worse. We're watching our country disintegrate right now, and it's scary.”

Down With Occupy Wall Street

In October 2011, as Occupy Wall Street protests were raging across the country, Mustaine railed against what he saw as the president’s inappropriate support for the populist movement,, calling Obama the most divisive president we’ve ever had. “I've never, in my 50 years of being alive, listened to an American president try and turn one class of people against another class of people,” he said in October 2011. “I've never—never—heard a president say, ‘Go down and join the protesters down at Wall Street,’ knowing that there are Nazis down there.” Mustaine was also angry that the protests were costing taxpayers extra money for the increased security in downtown Manhattan.

A War on Religion

Mustaine has said he believes there are forces in America waging war on religion. He gave an interview to MTV in December 2011 where he lays out the problem in his estimation. “I think there's enough evidence that shows there is some effort being made toward controlling religion,” said Mustaine, who calls himself a Christian. “It's pretty clear that they're taking prayer out of school. It's been happening for a very long time. The very first schoolbook that was written had God all over it. I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page. They're taking God out of the schools to dumb us down.” Mustaine also lamented what he sees as more and more Americans being persecuted for their religious beliefs and cited a story about a clerk being fired from Macy’s for not allowing a cross-dressing male into a women’s changing room. “Come on! Are you out of your mind, Macy's?” asked Mustaine.

Michelle Obama’s Sinister Style

It appears Mustaine is a fashion critic as well. Though many think of Michelle Obama as the epitome of style and grace, the Megadeth singer thinks her sartorial choices foreshadow something sinister. “I guess the best revenge is when you look back in history at what Michelle wore at his inauguration and she had a black dress on with two red triangles, so she looked like a black widow turned upside down,” Mustaine said in early August. “So there's gotta be some symbology there. You just don't wear something like that to some event like that without there being some kind of future message being told.”