Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters savaged Donald Trump with a pig balloon caricature as he vowed to make the most of his platform on Sunday at a first-of-a-kind festival of rock elder statesmen in the US.
Waters also renewed his long-standing criticism of Israel as he closed the first three-day weekend of Desert Trip, which earlier brought the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney to a vast stage in California.
Waters on stage at Desert Trip
As Waters played Pigs (Three Different Ones), Pink Floyd's 1977 assault on power mongers, an over-size swine-like balloon featuring a sketch on it of the Republican presidential candidate floated into the crowd.
"Ignorant, lying, racist, sexist," ran the words on the balloon's side, as overhead screens flashed inflammatory quotes from Trump including his boasts of groping women that were recently aired in an explosive video.
Unflattering drawings of Trump - including one in which he is naked with a miniscule penis and in another in which he has developed breasts - also appeared on screens before the message in bold letters: "Donald Trump is a Pig."
Waters drove home the point with a degree more subtlety as he performed Pink Floyd's classic Another Brick in the Wall, bringing to stage a troupe of singing teenagers, mostly ethnic minorities, who wore T-shirts that read "Derriba El Muro" - Spanish for "tear down the wall", a reference to Trump's promise to build a wall on the US/Mexican border.
Waters used anti-Trump images at his Desert Trip gig on Sunday
The Wall, Pink Floyd's rock 1979 opera, takes the barrier as a symbol for personal isolation but it has since frequently become a political metaphor, with Waters proud of his role as an activist.
73-year-old Waters is the latest in a long line of actors and musicians who have excoriated Trump over the past few months. Over the weekend, veteran actor Robert DeNiro launched a scathing attack on the billionaire in a video post.
Speaking to the 75,000-strong crowd, Waters hailed California students at the forefront of the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that aims to exert economic and cultural pressure on Israel.
"It's rare that somebody like me gets a platform like this, so I'm going to use this platform," he said.
"I'm going to send out all my most heartfelt love and support to all those young people on the campuses of the universities of California who are standing up for their brothers and sisters in Palestine," Waters said, hoping the boycott movement would "encourage the government of Israel to end the occupation."
Israel and a number of US Jewish groups strongly oppose the boycott movement and recently won a victory when California barred companies that do business with the state from shunning individual countries.
While Waters' anti-Trump stance elicited cheers, albeit not universally, his statement on Israel drew a more muted response with some fans clapping but others booing and at least one proudly waving an Israeli flag as a counter-protest.
Desert Trip, which will take place again next weekend with an identical lineup, is likely to be the most lucrative festival ever and also featured The Who, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.
