Nicko McBrain spent more than four decades as the engine room of Iron Maiden, and he has never been known for holding back. Now, a day before his autobiography hits shelves, the 74-year-old drummer has turned that bluntness on the President of the United States. In an interview with the U.K.’s The Telegraph, McBrain revealed that he turned down an invitation to play golf with Donald Trump, and then said that Trump and “his bunch of cronies” belong behind bars.
The comments were picked up on October 21 by Blabbermouth, Far Out, Metal Addicts and Greece’s Myth of Rock, and they spread quickly through the rock press.
The golf invitation he refused
McBrain lives in Florida, the same state where Trump keeps his Mar-a-Lago estate and spends a good deal of time on the golf course. According to the reports, the invitation came through a friend of McBrain’s whom he described as a “massive Republican.” The friend offered him a round with the president.
McBrain’s reply, as Blabbermouth relayed it, was a flat refusal: “No. No, mate.” The outlet notes that the drummer put an expletive in front of it.
What makes the remark notable is that McBrain does not usually wade into politics. He told The Telegraph that he is “not politically inclined,” before conceding that he must be, “because I have my thoughts about him.”
What McBrain actually said about Trump
Once he got going, McBrain did not stop at golf. Across the reports, he takes aim at several targets:
- Trump’s personality. “I’m not amused by the narcissism,” he said, according to Far Out, which also quotes him dismissing “all this kerfuffle about the Epstein files.”
- The conflict with Iran. Blabbermouth and Myth of Rock both report that he described the U.S. conflict with Iran as “the debauched war that he’s put on Iran.”
- Pete Hegseth. McBrain singled out the Pentagon chief, saying Hegseth is “going to be put in prison,” per Blabbermouth.
He saved his sharpest line for the end. “My last word on Trump and his bunch of cronies is, they should be put in jail,” he said, in the quote every outlet ran.
These are McBrain’s opinions, delivered in an interview to promote a book, and they should be read that way. None of the outlets that carried the story reported any response from the White House or from Hegseth.
Why it lands differently coming from McBrain
Rock musicians criticizing Trump is nothing new. But McBrain is an unusual messenger. He is not a protest singer, and he has spent most of his career talking about drums, golf and his Florida restaurant rather than politics. He is also a born-again Christian who has made his home in Florida for decades, a state Trump now treats as his political base.
His drumming career has also been through a difficult stretch. McBrain suffered a stroke in January 2023 that left his right side partially paralyzed. He fought his way back to the kit within months and finished Iron Maiden’s The Future Past tour, but he played his final show with the band in São Paulo, Brazil, on December 7, 2024. Speaking to Chaoszine about that decision in early 2025, as Metal Injection reported, he said the touring had simply become “too much for me.” Simon Dawson, a longtime associate of bassist Steve Harris through British Lion, has taken over the drum stool on the road.
Accounts differ slightly on McBrain’s status. Most of the coverage calls him Iron Maiden’s former drummer, while earlier reporting described him as stepping back from touring rather than leaving the band entirely. Either way, he no longer plays live with them.
What happens next
The timing of the interview is not an accident. McBrain’s memoir, Hello Boys And Girls!, is published by Harper Nonfiction on October 22, 2026, in hardback, ebook and audio. According to Fireworks Magazine, he will take the book on the road with a spoken-word tour, “An Evening With Nicko McBrain,” starting October 26 at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt and running through Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Malta, Ireland and the U.K. before closing in Glasgow on December 3.
Those evenings are question-and-answer affairs, so it is a safe bet that Trump will come up again. Whether McBrain doubles down or steers the conversation back to drumming, his Telegraph comments have guaranteed that the book tour starts with plenty of attention.
Meanwhile, Iron Maiden press on without him. Far Out notes that the band has announced a 2027 North American run, beginning April 14 in Tacoma and wrapping May 16 in Ocean City, with Bullet for My Valentine and The Raven Age in support. Many of those fans, on both sides of the political divide, will have read their old drummer’s words by then.
