John Dolmayan of System of A Down has confirmed that he no longer supports Trump, but has anything really changed?
In an early July interview with Rolling Stone Italy, vocalist Serj Tankian said he didn’t want to speak for anyone else, but to the best of his knowledge, his bandmate's support of the current president was a thing of the past. These comments sparked hope that perhaps the controversial drummer had woken up to the hypocrisy of supporting a right-wing authoritarian in order to be 'anti-establishment.'
In an interview of his own with The Armenian Report, Dolmayan confirmed his change of heart for himself: he no longer supports the current administration, citing their continued support of Israel’s perpetration of genocide in Gaza as the issue that caused him to draw the line. He stated:
I abhor injustice, cannot support Israel’s terrorist regime, and will not watch as children are butchered by the same people who should be the most sensitive to genocide. My opinion of Trump changed with this ‘new information’ of his allegiance to a genocidal regime.
He’s not the only one to come to this conclusion. Nearly three years into the asymmetric conflict propped up by billions in military aid, support for Israel has starkly declined, even among republicans.
That said, the claim that this is “new information” is hard to believe. While supporters like to claim that Trump campaigned on brokering peace, their vision of “peace” was leveling the Gaza Strip, forcibly relocating the population, and letting Jared Kushner redevelop the land into luxury resorts. The completion of a genocide is not peace, no matter how many press briefings you release insisting otherwise.
It is good that someone, particularly someone with such a large platform, can change their mind when presented with new information. However, lest we get too excited, he makes sure to clarify that he still thinks many of Trump's policies were “highly effective” and that he rejects “the idiocy of BLM, Antifa and trans indoctrination.” He gives a tired line about horseshoe theory, and makes clear that while he may be abandoning the figurehead, there is no reason to believe anything else has changed.
While there is very little utility in fact-checking bad-faith emotional arguments, it is worth taking a moment to address how someone in a band most people first associate with outspoken leftism came to align with the Republican Party in the first place. A March 2025 interview transcribed by Blabbermouth gives a more in-depth look at how he conceptualizes his politics. He justifies his vocal support of Trump as an attempt to reach young fans of SOAD, saying, “I just imagined some kid in a school who doesn't believe what everybody else is saying and refuses to go along with it. Those kids commit suicide, they have difficult times in their lives, and I want them to know that somebody famous doesn't think the way everybody else thinks, and it's okay for them not to think the way everybody else thinks, too.” He seems to have forgotten that children cannot vote.
The picture painted by these comments is one of someone with a juvenile view of the world, reactionary and oppositionally defiant for the sake of it. Even in this latest development, he has broken with a lame duck president, term-limited out and at record-low favourability, while standing by his prior support and not backing down on any viewpoint. There is no noble stance here, just a man who seems all too willing to tune out and do what he’s told.
