Ariel Pink has admitted to attending a pro-Trump protest at the White House yesterday, after filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer posted a photograph of Pink and John Maus together in the city. Pink says he was there to “peacefully show [his] support for the president” but was not part of the mob that stormed the Capitol. The role of Maus, whom Moyer filmed observing crowds at the Capitol, is unclear. In an email to Pitchfork, Moyer, whose Instagram account has been made private, says she met with the pair to discuss an unrelated project and, in her role as a documentary journalist, “felt obliged to record what was happening” in Washington.
After Pink became the subject of criticism on Twitter, he began replying to tweets questioning his involvement. “i was in dc to peacefully show my support for the president,” he wrote. “i attended the rally on the white house lawn and went back to hotel and took a nap. case closed.” Pressed on whether it was irresponsible to attend during the pandemic, he replied, “all the people at these events deserve whats coming to them. they took the risk knowing full well what might happen. BLM protests over the past 6 months are not informed about the pandemic?” Pink has previously tweeted about supporting Trump.
Meanwhile, Maus shared a religious text seemingly meant to criticize the idolization of Trump, but offered no explanation or clarification of why he was at the Capitol. Pitchfork has emailed representatives for both artists and sent a follow-up email to Moyer.
Pink and Maus recently collaborated on the music for TFW No GF, Alex Lee Moyer’s 2019 documentary about 4chan and its incel subculture. Maus also faced criticism back in 2017 for his involvement with the Adult Swim program Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace, which was canceled in 2016 after the alt-right ideologies of show creator Sam Hyde were widely reported. At the time, Maus stopped short of disavowing the series’ creators: “The guys I met were nice. They weren’t burning crosses or doing anything like that,” he said. “In other words, I never had, from what I know about it, any indication that anything other than certain instances of a sort of trolling was going on.”