Natalie Maines took a swipe at Donald Trump from a New York stage, and the White House fired back with a brutal personal insult.
The White House called The Chicks singer Natalie Maines a “despicable nobody” with a “peanut-sized brain” after she aimed remarks at President Donald Trump from the stage of New York City’s Beacon Theater on Monday, Oct. 12, 2026.
The full line came in a statement the White House gave Fox News Digital on Wednesday, Oct. 14: “Natalie Maines is a despicable nobody who clearly suffers from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted her peanut-sized brain.”
A Callback at the Beacon
Maines spoke at the Beacon on the first of two Manhattan dates on The Chicks’ “Taking the Long Way 20th Anniversary Tour.” She stood onstage with bandmates Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire. Maines turned 52 on Oct. 14.
Before she spoke, the band screened a vintage montage of TV pundits and ordinary people in an uproar over the notion that someone might not like a sitting president. Maines then told the room she would “never” give in to the “shut up and sing” crowd. She looked back at 2003 and the group’s past belief that the backlash was as bad as things could possibly get.
Maines told the crowd, “Now I’d give George [W.] Bush a big wet kiss,” and “’Cause now we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from the United States.”
Later in the show, she gave a shout-out to the Obama Presidential Center, which the band visited in Chicago earlier in October. She praised “all the positive things they did and continue to do.” Maines drew a line between that era and this one. “So different than the deranged nut job we have right now,” Maines said.
$1,500 Ticket, Split Reaction
Fans split over the Beacon set. One fan grumbled online about paying $1,500 for a ticket and getting politics along with the music. Other fans applauded her for saying it.
The band plays the 2006 album start to finish, then a “best of” encore. The tour runs through early November, with stops still ahead in Austin on Tuesday, Oct. 20, and Los Angeles on Nov. 1 and 2.
Death Threats and the FBI
Maines told a London audience on March 10, 2003, that the band was ashamed the president of the United States came from Texas. The U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq at the time. Her Beacon remarks were a deliberate callback to that.
Country radio pulled their singles. Conservative commentators branded them unpatriotic, and fellow country artists told them to be quiet. Fans organized boycotts and protests. The death threats grew serious enough that the FBI stepped in, and hundreds of country stations blacklisted the trio.
Rick Rubin produced “Taking the Long Way,” released in 2006. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums. It won best country album and the top prize, album of the year, at the 2007 Grammys. Lead single “Not Ready to Make Nice” took three Grammys, including song and record of the year, and reached No. 4 on the Hot 100. The controversy also produced the song “Easy Silence” and the documentary “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.”
Six No. 1s, Then No. 36
Nashville never fully welcomed them back. “Not Ready to Make Nice” stalled at No. 36 on Hot Country Songs, a steep drop for a group that had scored six No. 1s on that chart before 2003. Their highest since is No. 20, with “Gaslighter” in 2020.
The Chicks, formerly The Dixie Chicks, have won 13 Grammy Awards since Maines joined in 1995. Maines is a Texas native.
The band performed “Goodbye Earl” on the 2016 DCX World Tour MMXVI in front of a backdrop showing Trump defaced as the devil.
In May, Maines posted a profanity-filled Instagram message blasting Trump’s $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded plan to pay allies who were investigated during the Biden years. She wrote in that post that democracy was vanishing in plain sight. The White House answered that post with the same “peanut-sized brain” statement it issued on Oct. 14.
