BODY COUNT frontman, hip-hop legend, actor and director Ice-T has weighed in on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a fiercely competitive contest. He told Classic Rock magazine in a new interview: “You know, I despise Trump. I think Trump is an absolute piece of shit. I think people vote with their wallets, so they believe that he’s gonna potentially put money in their pockets and some shit. But it didn’t happen last time.

“I think the good thing about Trump is that he let the world see how fucked up the United States is,” Ice-T continued. “He let the world see how racist and how scandalous a great portion of our country is. Nobody can just look at dude and say he’s a solid motherfucker. He’s got more fucking felonies than all my criminal friends put together and doesn’t even have an ankle bracelet on. It’s just showing us how this country is operated and run, so it’s crazy.”

Back in February 2017, shortly after Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, Ice-T was asked by Playboy.com if he was surprised that the billionaire real estate mogul won the U.S. presidency. He responded: “I think we all were surprised that Trump won, because dude be lying. He’s a motherfucker. He didn’t never show his taxes. He’s the ultimate con artist. He’s the kind of rich person, when people say they don’t like rich people — that’s what they mean. I know Richard Branson, I know Mark Cuban — billionaires that you can sit up and kick it with. But Trump is an elitist. He’s a demagogue. And yeah, it’s scary, man. He’s got a lot of power. I come from the gang world, you know. You can’t just be talking shit and think the other gangs don’t hear you. You can’t talk the way he talks and think the rest of the world doesn’t see him as their enemy. Once the dude told the world, ‘I’m smarter than the generals,’ I knew we were up shit creek. But I predict his own supporters will turn on him in six to eight months. So let’s just cross our fingers.”

In March 2017, Ice-T‘s BODY COUNT bandmate, guitarist Ernie Cunnigan, better known by his stage name Ernie C, also weighed in on Trump‘s presidency based on his first six weeks in the Oval Office. Speaking to Metal Wani about how the political climate in the United states had affected the lyrical content of the band’s then-new album, “Bloodlust”, Ernie said: “We kind of felt that we would have the president that we would have now — just ’cause of the way the climate of the country felt. It just felt like it was going in the wrong direction. So when he got elected, it wasn’t a big surprise, ’cause everything was going in the wrong direction, with him running for office. So he brought up a lot of undercurrent; it came up bubbling up to the top.”

He continued: “We had Obama for eight years, and everyone got kind of of comfortable. He was a good president, and we got a little comfortable, and we didn’t actually notice all the underlying things that were going on. But Trump got here, and in six weeks — it seems like he’s been president for a long time, but it’s been six weeks — and he kind of tipped over the table, and everyone’s kind of looking around, saying, ‘What’s going on?’ But we felt it all along. You know what I mean?”

The guitarist added: “Twenty-five years ago, we did ‘Cop Killer’ as a warning. So now, twenty-five years later, it’s still going on. Now we’re saying, on this record, ‘Watch out.’ ‘Civil War’ and songs like that, it’s kind of warnings of what we feel. ‘Cause being a musician, you get the opportunity to travel to different places, travel around the world. We’ve gone around the world, and we felt that America, something was happening and it’s not exactly right. And it’s happening in a lot of different places now — from France to Italy to… even Sweden. A lot of things are happening.”

Calling the process of making albums “a way of venting,” Ernie praised protesters demonstrating against Trump‘s executive orders and offered his opinion on why Trump was elected in the first place.

He said: “We need for people to get out and about and get out and protest and even vote, but do it in a positive way and have a direction. You can’t just say, ‘I don’t like the president.’ You’ve gotta get out and vote and find something better. ‘Cause this last election here in America, we didn’t really have a good choice. That’s why he won. There’s no good choices anymore. People don’t want to be in public office — good people. Every once in a while, you get good people in there.”

He continued: “Obama was a good man. I always say, whether you liked him as a president or not, he was a good man, he had good values. Right now we’ve lost all our values. We have someone that’s lying… He’s on television right now lying. He’s just lying and you know it’s a lie, but there’s still 40 percent of people who follow a person that lies, and they know it’s a lie, and they’re not worrying about it. They’re worrying about getting a job and things like that that are more important. That’s more important than morals. And morals help out in a lot of different ways.”

BODY COUNT‘s new album, “Merciless”, will be released on November 22 via Century Media.

BODY COUNT released the official music video for “Psychopath” earlier this year, its first new single since 2020’s “Bum-Rush”, which won a Grammy Award for “Best Metal Performance”. The new track, which features FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY vocalist Joe Badolato, shows Ice-T and crew on maximum killing overdrive and primed for the next chapter of the legendary Los Angeles-based band’s 35-plus-year career. Longtime collaborator Will Putney (KNOCKED LOOSE, THE GHOST INSIDE) produced the song, which was released via Century Media Records. Directed by Jay Scorsese, the “Psychopath” video pulls inspiration from fictional and real-life horrors, with references spanning from Jason Voorhees to Ted Bundy. 

Watch “Psychopath” below.