Maroon 5 musician: ‘We’d take President Bush in a minute’ over Trump

by Josh Delk - 09/15/17 10:24 AM ET

Maroon 5 keyboardist PJ Morton is slamming President Trump for his statements on racism and political violence, saying that he would rather have President George W. Bush back in office.

“We’d take President Bush in a minute right now,” Morton told CNN in an interview published Friday.

“As crazy as things seemed to be,” Morton said, Bush “was still a level-headed person who seemed to care, and if he didn’t care and if he had a racist bone in his body or something like that, it wasn’t OK to show that. He wasn’t overt,” he said.

Morton, who is also an independent R&B artist, took on Trump’s controversial comments about Mexicans entering the United States and relations with black Americans.

{mosads}”I think this is the first time we’ve had a president and even a candidate to, you know, call Mexicans rapists, to say the judge wasn’t able to properly do his job because he’s Mexican, asking black people what do they have to lose,” Morton said, “who would have ever thought it would make Bush not be so bad?”

Maroon 5 has previously taken stances on political issues, including a decision to cancel two concerts in North Carolina in 2016 in protest of the state’s controversial law mandating that people use public bathrooms corresponding to their gender assigned at birth.

“I think [Trump] shows us who he is over and over and we should believe that. … That was him,” Morton said in reference to Trump’s comments on the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last month.

“That’s him, and I think that we should accept that and know that that is him and I just feel like it’s a shame, [but] it’s kind of good that he can’t play politics enough,” the musician added.

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