Live Aid guru Bob Geldof says the cancellation of US foreign aid is causing deaths and boycotts should punish Musk

Geldof calls out Trump for killing foreign aid and his right-hand man for calling empathy ‘a weakness’.

Globally renowned musician and activist Bob Geldof says if he was 15 years old, he would organise a punishing boycott of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

At 73, though, he says he no longer has the energy but believes youngsters should be leading the charge in spurning Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink, car brand Tesla and X social media platform.

On the eve of an Adelaide show on Tuesday, Geldof says he’s horrified by the US government’s decision to freeze foreign aid – on the 40th anniversary of the famed Live Aid concert.

The lead singer of The Boomtown Rats drew together some of the world’s biggest rock stars – including U2’s Bono, Mick Jagger, Queen and David Bowie – for the worldwide fundraising event in 1985, but says it was empathy that saw the event raise millions of dollars to ease starvation in Africa.

“Empathy works. That flies in the face of that sociopathic moron Elon Musk, who last week said the weakness of western civilisation is empathy. Wrong,” Geldof said of President Donald Trump’s “special adviser”.

Bob Geldof at an Adelaide hotel this week. Picture: Ben Clark

Irish singer, songwriter and performer Bob Geldof performing at the 1985 famine relief concert Live Aid, which he helped organise. Picture: supplied

Claiming his music, charity work and fundraising had always been fuelled “by anger”, Geldof told of being particularly outraged now as about dozen emails a day arrived from charity organisations in Africa.

He said they described how the decision by Mr Trump to stop foreign aid spending had slashed help for starving Sudanese people, of women losing protection from brutal sexual assaults, and how AIDS patients were forced to ration their final, lifesaving pills until they inevitably died.

“The strongest nation on Earth, the most powerful men on the planet, the richest men in the world, have decided to wage war on the weakest and most vulnerable,” he said.

Geldof – whose show, An Evening with Bob Geldof: Songs and Stories from an Extraordinary Life, is at the Norwood Concert Hall on Tuesday – said he feared the US was fuelling a global march towards fascism.

Geldof, who is in Adelaide for An Evening with Bob Geldof Songs and Stories from an Extraordinary Life, shared fears that the US is fuelling a global move toward fascism. Picture: Ben Clark

However, despite Mr Trump’s efforts to show the world that the US is “the big guy in town”, Geldof believes Australia will remain protected by the US’s need to retain a partner in the region.

“The world has changed in the last couple of months and everyone is finding a way of dealing with it,” he said.

“The concern is the world will be entirely transactional and will retreat into individual silos.” Geldof also said that social media had driven an intense change from 40 years ago during the Live Aid concert era when politics and culture was “filtered through the lens of rock’n’roll”.

Geldof said social media and algorithms had “changed everything”, making musicians less political. As such, an event similar to Live Aid was now unlikely to succeed.

At 73, Geldof says he doesn’t have the energy but encourages SA youngsters to lead the charge in boycotting Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink, car brand Tesla and Twitter X social media platform. Picture: Georges De Keerle/Getty Images

He also told of wandering around the Adelaide Fringe festival during the week where locals “were kind to me”.

Laughingly, he described the response as a nice surprise, claiming South Australians had “ignored” him and The Boomtown Rats for the past 50 years.

His invitation to South Australians attending Tuesday’s show comes with a warning – not for his Irish brand of swearing but, rather, for its length.

“They keep telling me to get it down to three hours but it went back up to four in Tassie,” Geldof said.

Originally published as Live Aid guru Bob Geldof says the cancellation of US foreign aid is causing deaths and boycotts should punish Musk