MEGADETH Drummer Says DAVE MUSTAINE's OBAMA Comments 'Got Blown Up In The Press'

MEGADETH drummer Shawn Drover says that Dave Mustaine's suggestion at a concert that President Obama was behind the mass shootings in Aurora and at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was the MEGADETH frontman's "viewpoint at that given time" and "it is nothing that represents the band as a whole."

While performing with MEGADETH on August 7 in Singapore, Mustaine told the crowd, "Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban. So he's staging all of these murders, like the Fast And Furious thing down at the border and Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there. And now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple."

He continued: "I don't know where I'm gonna live if America keeps going the way it's going because it looks like it's turning into Nazi America."

Speaking to Atlantic City Insiders, Drover had the following to say about Mustaine's comments: "I just think that was something that was [said on the] spur of the moment. The song 'Holy Wars' is about, obviously, holy wars and stuff. Dave just kind of wings it sometimes [while speaking to the crowd at shows], and that came out, for whatever reason."

He continued, "Things have been said by many bands and all that kind of stuff, and it just so happens that somebody was videotaping it and some web site got hold of it and it just blew up into this big, huge thing. I really didn't think anything of it at the time, but it's turned into this thing in the media and the press.

"Things like that happen; people say stuff that maybe someone doesn't agree with. So there you go. There was no harm intended, obviously, but it was something that he had said and that was his viewpoint at that given time. I really have nothing else to say about that other than that. It was something that was said. There was no harm intended, but it just kind of got blown up in the press. But that happens every day; you can look up something in the press today where somebody said or somebody did… It's not like this is a new occurrence for an entertainer."

Asked if Mustaine is speaking for the entire MEGADETH band when making such comments or if he is just speaking for himself, Drover said, "No, not at all. He doesn't speak for the band on things like that. That was his personal viewpoint at that time. So there you go. It's nothing that represents the band as a whole."

You can hear Drover's responses to the questions about Mustaine's Obama comments in the audio recording of the Atlantic City Insiders interview below, starting at around the six-minute mark.