Pearl Jam Under Fire Over Poster Featuring Trump-Like Body Outside Burning White House

The band endorsed Democratic Sen. Jon Tester at a Montana concert.
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Grunge rockers Pearl Jam are in hot water over a concert poster depicting a burning White House with an eagle picking at a skeleton that has hair like President Donald Trump.

The band said the poster for Monday’s show in Missoula, Montana was designed by Jeff Ament, who plays bass in the group, and artist Bobby Brown:

The poster also features an endorsement of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and a note from the bassist on the back that calls him “the real deal.” Ament is from Montana.

Tester is depicted as an Evel Knievel figure, leaping over the flaming White House on a tractor. But the part of the image getting the most attention is the skeleton on the front lawn. It has a Trump-life coif and holds a briefcase bearing a Soviet hammer and sickle. A bald eagle picks at the skeleton’s foot:

Matt Rosendale, Tester’s Republican rival in this year’s midterm election, called the image “disgusting and reprehensible” and urged the senator to denounce it.

RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel described the image as “disgusting” and the National Republican Senatorial Committee denounced it as “despicable.”

We never saw the poster before the show, and we don’t like it,” Tester spokesman Chris Meagher told the Washington Post. “And we don’t condone violence of any kind. Period.”

Ament defended the poster in a statement to Rolling Stone:

The role of artists is to make people think and feel, and the current administration has us thinking and feeling. I was the sole conceptualist of this poster, and I welcome all interpretations and discourse. Love, from the First Amendment, Jeff Ament.”

Fans of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band were divided by the poster’s imagery:

Before You Go

Peter Gabriel's bodysuit from "Steam"

Artifacts From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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