Jack White considers being attacked by Trump’s White House a ‘Badge of Honor’

Jack White has fired off another shot at President Donald Trump, saying it feels like a “badge of honor” to be insulted by someone speaking for the White House. The musician also expressed disbelief that the reason one of Trump’s loyalists publicly clapped back at him was because of a comment White made about the president’s flashy Oval Office decor.

White posted the lengthy statement on Instagram on Wednesday, Aug. 20, just a day after going back and forth with White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. Their exchange started when White uploaded a picture of Trump with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, describing it as “a vulgar, gold-leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room.”

Cheung then issued a response slamming White as a “washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career. It’s apparent he’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’”

White has often aimed at Trump and his administration, even going so far as to sue the former president for copyright infringement when the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” was used at a campaign rally last year. (That lawsuit was eventually dropped.) Because of that history, White said he was stunned that the thing that finally made the Trump team respond directly wasn’t his criticisms of Trump’s many controversies, which he went on to list one by one.

Anyone can look through White’s post to see the full rundown. Still, some of the harshest included Trump’s “gestapo ICE tactics,” his “disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women,” his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and “inclusion in the Epstein files,” his “ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” his “nazi like rallies,” and his “constant, constant, constant lying to the American people.”

After all of that, White wrote: “No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that; it was the fucking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults. How petty and pathetic and thin-skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’? Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving.”

White then turned Cheung’s words around, saying Trump himself is “masquerading” not only as a human being, but as “a Christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy.” He added that Trump has been playing this role “as a businessman for decades,” making money by using other people’s money to find loophole after loophole and grift after grift.”

White closed his message by saying: “Being insulted by the actual White House that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who Trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves. And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old, who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.”