Gene Simmons claims he lost work for his opinion on Donald Trump: “That was not a popular sentiment”
Kiss’ Gene Simmons has claimed that he lost out on work in relation to his opinion on President Donald Trump.
Notably, in 2025, Kiss were celebrated in the Kennedy Center Honors and Simmons was photographed alongside Trump ahead of the ceremony.
Following their nomination, Simmons said he was “deeply honoured” to receive the award and described Kiss as “the embodiment of the American dream.”
Now, Simmons has spoken about the repercussions of him cosying up to Trump in an interview with former Fox News presenter and conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly.
O’Reilly asked, “Has your freedom of intellectual thought cost you any work,” to which Simmons replied, “Yeah, there’s such a thing as being cancelled. I’m blessed, when you get to a certain financial comfort zone, it doesn’t affect.”
Simmons then urged people to get on with people despite political disagreements, adding, “I didn’t always agree with my mother, and I would give my life for my mother. This idea of always agreeing with somebody is lunacy. Sometimes they’re wrong, for you.”
When asked what specifically cost him work, Simmons claimed, “There were maybe two or three shows where somebody asked me on camera, locally, as I’m doing interviews, ‘What do you think of the president?’ And I said, ‘I don’t have any problem getting the Kennedy Center Awards at all. He’s the president of these United States, and he was legally voted into power.”
The Kiss bassist continued, “And this idea of just banding about ‘Trump this’ and ‘Trump that’. No, it’s President Trump, just like a doctor. I don’t like my doctor, but he’s a doctor. Doctor so-and-so. And that was not a popular sentiment.”
Earlier on in the conversation, Simmons said that it’s fine to “love or hate” Trump, but he deserves respect because he was “the people have spoken” in the 2024 election, adding, “He won the election by millions, and the electoral college as well. End of story. You don’t like it, you can wait until the next election and vote your conscience.”
He also said “nobody ever asked me” when he was younger, which political party he voted for, urging listeners to “leave politics out of it when we sit around and break bread”.
While Simmons, who made headlines in March for saying musicians should “do your art and shut up” and “nobody is interested in your opinions, that includes me”, said to O’Reilly of the prospective Democrat candidates in California, “I wouldn’t vote for if you paid me for it,” before saying the Republican candidate Steve Hilton “should be the next governor”.
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