Live Aid co-founder Bob Geldof hit out at US President Donald Trump and billionaire businessman Elon Musk during a gig in Dublin over the weekend, as he raged over the impact of cuts to US aid funding.
12:30 ET, 02 Jun 2025Updated 12:38 ET, 02 Jun 2025
Donald Trump has been slammed by Live Aid legend Bob Geldof
Live Aid founder Bob Geldof didn’t hold back his criticism of Elon Musk and former US President Donald Trump during a concert in Dublin on Sunday, June 1.
The Live Aid icon was performing with his band, The Boomtown Rats, at the Rewind festival in St Anne’s Park when he launched into a passionate critique about cuts to US aid funding.
He accused the duo of having “declared a war on the weakest, poorest, most vulnerable people on our planet,” using some rather strong language to describe them.
“A couple of Irish singers have been going around the world this week, Bruce in London, Bono in LA and us here, and all of us have said the same thing, that the strongest nation in the world, the most powerful man on the planet, and the richest ever human being in the history of the world, on the first of February 2025 declared a war on the weakest, poorest, most vulnerable people on our planet,” he raged.
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His tirade continued: “When that f—— hedge-trimming, catatonic f——… Musk decided that he would cut US aid, food, and medicine. Since that moment, he was wielding his hedge-trimmer, 300,000 of the poorest people in the world have died because of that f—,” he told the audience.
Bob Geldof took a swipe at Donald Trump while performing in Dublin(Image: Getty)
Bob’s fervent speech occurred during his reunion with Live Aid co-organizer Midge Ure at the one-day festival. The duo orchestrated Live Aid in 1984 to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia, building on the success of their charity single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, reports the Express.
“We only wrote one song together, but it turned out to be the biggest-selling record in British history,” he shared with the audience as they performed the hit.
Live Aid will mark its 40th anniversary in July, and the charitable trust has amassed over £140 million so far.
Recently, Musk stepped down from the Trump administration and his position as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This newly established agency was charged with revamping US government spending.
Elon Musk recently quit his role in Donald Trump’s administration(Image: Getty)
He fittingly announced his departure in a post on X – his personal social media platform – on Wednesday, May 28.
Trump had assigned Musk and DOGE the task of cutting federal spending across US government departments. However, as Trump’s global tariffs policy impacted the US economy, especially its relationship with China, tensions grew between the two men.
Before the confrontation, he had commended the tycoon for cutting aid to various locations, including a small South African nation that he joked “nobody has ever heard of”. In an extensive 99-minute speech to Congress, Trump mentioned the landlocked African country of Lesotho as one of the places affected by Musk’s DOGE reductions in US aid.
“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho,” Trump declared. He followed up with a quip that elicited chuckles and smiles from his Republican colleagues: “Which nobody has ever heard of.”