IRON MAIDEN's Ex-Drummer NICKO MCBRAIN Says DONALD TRUMP And 'His Bunch Of Cronies Should Be Put In Jail'

IRON MAIDEN's former drummer Nicko McBrain has revealed to U.K.'s The Telegraph that he turned down an opportunity to meet U.S. president Donald Trump.

"I was actually invited to go and play golf with him," McBrain said. "A friend of mine who's a massive Republican said, 'Oh, do you want to come and play golf with us? With the president.' And I said, 'You fucking what?'… and I just said, 'No. No, mate.'

"I'm not politically inclined, although I must be because I have my thoughts about him," Nicko continued. "I'm not amused by the narcissism, and all this kerfuffle about the Epstein files and whatnot, and especially the debauched war that he's put on Iran."

Referencing U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been under fire for what has been described as his "inept" leadership of U.S. military, the 74-year-old drummer added: "And this Pete Hegseth business — oh, he's going to be put in prison.

"My last word on Trump and his bunch of cronies is, they should be put in jail."

This past August, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson took aim at Donald Trump's controversial attempt to rename Lake Ontario. Days after Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. government to refer to Lake Ontario as "Lake America", Dickinson joked about the band's journey to Toronto to play a concert, referring to having crossed the "Lake Of Ontario".

Back in 2017, Dickinson addressed the fact that his autobiography, "What Does This Button Do?", contains very few mentions of politics."There's not really anything to say about politics during the period that hasn't already been said by much more learned commentators than me," he told Vice. "I'm a musician. Do I have political views? Yes. Is an autobiography a place to put them? No. What that does is that it attaches an inordinate amount of weight and self-importance to your own political viewpoint, which, if people want to hear your political viewpoint, then be a politician. Join a political party or do whatever. Stand up and say, 'I think you need to hear my political views because I'm especially qualified to tell you why you should do what I think.' I don't have any of that special sauce. I've got no crystal ball. I'm no expert witness on stuff. If you want to hear about what I think about politics, I'll tell you, but why does it matter? I'm just one citizen out of millions and I have one vote and so does everyone else. The fact that I'm famous for being a musician or doing whatever, sorry, it's not enough reason other than salacious curiosity or an attempt to dig up a story which they can then immediately slap down.

"But I would fit somewhere," he continued. "I'm right of center, but not very far. Put it this way. I'm not a socialist at all but I do believe in a nice humanistic approach to the way society should be run. I think there's a difference between profit and greed. I think profit is a way of measuring how efficiently a business or a society is being run. Greed is just evidence of its corruption and fecundity. I'm not a fan of greed. For those reasons, some of the Thatcher years were appalling, but at the same time, what happened to the U.K. during those years was transformative. Because at the end of the '70s, we were toast. The country was washed up. At the end of the '80s, it was not. In between was a whole other thing, some of which I didn't agree with, but every politician makes mistakes.

"When you get to the extremes, people exclude people. When you're somewhere in the middle, people include people. I would agree with some statements. In America, I would be hopeless. I would have one foot in the Democratic camp and one foot in the Republican camp. Because I agree with some Republicans. I agree with some Democrats. Where do I fit? I'm a contrarian. I make up my mind on each individual issue what I think. That's not necessarily in line with a political party, you know?"

Dickinson went on to say that "in the middle is where healthy societies belong. Occasionally when things fail, they need a bit of a shock," he said. "Hopefully, they will bring things back to the middle. What worries me as a guy who did history at college is looking at history and seeing how, when the middle disintegrates in different societies, how it has always led toward a polarization, which has in turn led to some unpleasant effects. It has happened in Europe on a regular basis. The one place it hasn't happened, as a matter of fact, is the U.K. We've had one dictator, Oliver Cromwell. He lasted longer than he should have done and we got rid of him, and we asked for the king to come back, which may sound strange. But when we brought the king back, we said, 'You can be the king because we like you, but if we don't like you, you can't be the king anymore.'

"We've had this weird checks-and-balances things for hundreds of years. The other thing we've never had is a written Constitution. As in written, set in stone. I get the impression that written Constitutions always end in tears because they have no possibility to change. It's all written down and the way you change the Constitutions is so prescriptive and so prohibitive that it never changes. It's not a living document at all. Its interpretive to an extent but nevertheless it's still so prescriptive. To me, it feels like a burden."

In 2018, Dickinson told the French news magazine L'Obs that he was "quite relaxed about the idea" of the United Kingdom separating from the European Union, explaining that he thought Brexit would make Britain "more flexible" and that "Brexit actually opens our borders, Brexit opens the United Kingdom to the whole of the world." Three years later, Bruce, who admitted he voted to leave the EU, told Sky News that Brexit was making it harder for British acts to do tours and concerts in Europe and that the government should be doing more to help.

Nicko's autobiography, "Hello Boys And Girls!", will be published on October 22, 2026 via Harper Nonfiction.

Later this month, Nicko will take to the road on a spoken-word tour to promote "Hello Boys And Girls!". Starting in Frankfurt on October 26, McBrain will visit theaters across Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland and the U.K.

For further information and tickets visit nickomcbrain.co.uk.

The now-74-year-old McBrain announced his retirement on December 7, 2024 in a statement on MAIDEN's web site and social media. He also said that night's concert at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil would mark his final show with the legendary rock band. McBrain has since been replaced by Simon Dawson, a former session drummer and MAIDEN founding bassist Steve Harris's longtime bandmate in BRITISH LION.

McBrain lives at home in Florida with his wife Rebecca, their cat Lola, and two Yorkshire Terriers, Tigerlily and Tinkerbell.

McBrain officially joined IRON MAIDEN in December 1982 for the 1983 "Piece Of Mind" album and tour, replacing Clive Burr, after McBrain's previous band TRUST had supported IRON MAIDEN during the U.K. leg of the "Killers" tour in 1981. McBrain brought a degree of finesse and technicality that was largely missing from IRON MAIDEN's early output. Whereas Burr was often lauded for his heavy-handed, punk-oriented style, McBrain was largely the opposite, playing with a degree of dexterity and flair that helped primary songwriter Harris take MAIDEN down more adventurous paths. He eventually became the third longest-tenured member of MAIDEN, behind Harris and guitarist Dave Murray.

Photo credit: John McMurtrie