Jack White Is Standing Up to Trump. Good for Him

Before he was an outspoken critic of Trump, before he was even a musician, Jack White was an upholsterer. Growing up in Detroit, he began as an apprentice at just 15 years old, then opened his own shop, Third Man Upholstery, when he was 21. His music career took off a year later, when he formed the White Stripes with his then-wife, Meg White. But he never stopped working on furniture, even teaching us how to reupholster a stool in his 2014 Rolling Stone cover story. You know, normal rock star stuff. 

There’s an obvious overlap between White’s music and his interior design business that goes well beyond sharing the same name. (His label is called Third Man Records, but getting into his lifelong love of the number three requires a separate essay). You’ll never come across a better-dressed indie rocker, and he famously follows a strict color scheme — red for White Stripes, yellow for Third Man, and blue for his solo work, with black appearing across all. He’s as serious about vintage and historical artifacts as he is about reissuing and preserving music. In every aspect of his life, Jack White brings unapologetic intentionality.

“In carpentry and interior design, being in Jack’s presence during the ideation process, the hypotheticals and head tilting, can be both inspiring and maddening,” his nephew and business partner, Ben Blackwell, writes on White’s art and design website. “There’s no reason a building needs to have acoustical tiles, tin ceilings or shiny yellow floors. But that’s not the point. The point is to make something beautiful.”

So it makes sense that Donald Trump’s redecoration of the White House, in a style that is far from beautiful, irked White this month. The musician posted a photo of Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, comparing the makeover to “a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room.” He took a moment to shout out “REAL leader of a nation” Zelensky and his sleek black suit, but otherwise said the entire thing was surely “an embarrassment to American history.” The lengthy, merciless caption is basically the rock equivalent of Miranda Priestly’s cerulean sweater takedown. Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking. 

But it gets even better. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung actually responded to White, attempting to dismiss him as “a washed up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career. It’s apparent he’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’” Ouch.

White doubled down and then some, replying with a fiery 750-word roast that immediately pointed out the dark humor of it all: The fact White has been publicly condemning Trump for years, yet the one time the president responds, it’s because White called him tacky. In the past, White has lambasted celebrities who’ve “normalized” Trump. He quit Twitter, and, alongside Meg, even sued Trump for using “Seven Nation Army” in a campaign video (they dropped the lawsuit last fall). 

He detailed his many previous attacks on Trump’s awful policies — his “blatant fascist manipulation of government,” his “gestapo ICE tactics,” his “disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women,” his “ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” his “constant, constant, constant lying to the American people,” and much more. 

“It wasn’t me calling out any of that,” White said. “It was the fucking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults. How petty and pathetic and thin-skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’? Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving!”

It’s important to take Cheung’s statement with a grain of salt. After all, it’s on behalf of a politician who recently described Bruce Springsteen as a “dried out prune of a rocker” and proclaimed to the world that Taylor Swift is no longer hot. But his other kind words for White and his “stalled career” aren’t just comical, they’re plain wrong. This is a guy who’s been in the music industry for nearly 30 years, with 12 Grammys under his belt, and the author of a riff that’s become a stadium chant in sporting events across the world. He’s about to get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this fall. Olivia Rodrigo cried when she met him. Bob Dylan taught him how to weld. Beyoncé sent him flowers. His most recent release, 2024’s killer No Name LP, got some of his best reviews ever. Most musicians would kill for a career that stalled. 

White has rarely been known as an overtly political artist — his first time publicly endorsing a presidential candidate was Bernie Sanders in 2020 — and he says in his post that he’s not a registered Democrat. But he’s never been one to stay quiet, either, especially early in his career, when he famously feuded with fellow musicians, particularly the Black Keys. “I think a lot of emotions have been demonized over the years,” he told us in 2018, “As if they should never exist on planet Earth. Absolutely not. Without revenge and anger and these quote-unquote negative emotions, how would we have won World War II?”

Right now, White’s “negative emotions” are winning. He’s speaking truth to power and getting under the president’s skin, and his punches are landing. He just turned 50 last month (and was possibly the only human ever to be gifted both a 1991 Suzuki Samurai and his first-ever cell phone). He’s no longer worried about watered-down versions of the White Stripes. He’s got bigger issues on his mind. And we should listen to him now, more than ever.