An American heavy metal band has been staging the same fake execution of sitting presidents for decades, but they say their latest performance caught the attention of the Secret Service.
The Virginia-based band GWAR performed a mock killing of President Donald Trump, 80, when they played at Warped Tour in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, infuriating MAGA fans.
“We [fictitiously] killed President Obama. We didn’t hear from the Secret Service. But you [fictitiously] kill Trump, and you better believe that there’s gonna be some s--t going on,” the band’s lead vocalist, Mike “Blöthar The Berserker” Bishop, shared in an interview with Rocking With Jam Man.
A video of GWAR dragging an effigy of Trump on stage at the Vans Warped Tour, disemboweling it, and soaking the front rows in fake blood went viral in conservative circles last week after clips filmed by fans circulated online.
But it’s a spectacle the band has long been known for, having staged mock executions of hundreds of celebrities and public figures over decades.
“Gwar’s biggest enemy has always been authority. And what bigger symbol of authority is there in the United States than the President? So, no matter who’s in office, Gwar is going to kill them on stage,” the band’s guitarist, Mike Derks, said in a 2022 interview.
The band has built a reputation for highly theatrical live performances featuring grotesque sci-fi character costumes and deliberately over-the-top, blood-drenched staging, often used to parody elements of pop culture, politics, and religion.
While some users wrote that “they kill every president” and that the circulating clips were just “GWAR doing GWAR things,” others claimed that they “can’t keep getting away with this!”
Bishop, asked directly if his band is under investigation by the Secret Service, replied: “Let’s just say that GWAR is on some lists,” comparing attempts to stop the band from performing their onstage antics to “cancel culture” from right-wing figures.
“For years, GWAR would do whatever the f--k we wanted. We would [fictitiously] kill politicians from both sides of the aisle. We would [fictitiously] kill famous people. We never had any backlash,” he said, noting that this changed when Trump was elected president and “people started getting extremely upset about politics and music and politics in art.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Secret Service and the White House for comment, but received no immediate response.
The president, who has survived three assassination attempts since 2024, has been especially cautious about any potential threats to his life, and his MAGA supporters have also been highly defensive in response to any criticism they deem a threat.
One example is former FBI Director James Comey, who posted a photo of seashells forming the numbers “8647,” which was seen as a threat to the president’s life by MAGA figures. The number “86″ is commonly used as slang in the service industry to mean “toss out” or “get rid of,” and Trump is the 47th president.
Though Comey apologized and said he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” Secret Service agents said they were looking into the matter, and two federal charges were later brought against him after the Justice Department interpreted the Instagram post as a threat to harm Trump.
