Bono’s daughters have banned him from speaking about Harvey Weinstein.
The U2 frontman worked closely with the disgraced movie mogul on 2013’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ as he wrote the accompanying song ‘Ordinary Love’ and though he admitted the producer has one “very good work” for his band, the 58-year-old singer – who has daughters Jordan, 29, and Eve, 27, and sons Eli, 19, and John, 17, with wife Ali – won’t say too much about the sexual harassment allegations against him or the wider #MeToo movement because his kids don’t think it is his “time”.
He said: “He did very good work for U2. My daughters are very unforgiving in this regard. Whenever I get philosophical, they tell me, ‘It’s not your time to speak on this.’ ”
The ‘One’ hitmaker is also an avid philanthropist and has worked closely with a number of former US presidents, but he currently doesn’t want to “be near” President Donald Trump because he doesn’t “trust” him.
He told the Sunday Times magazine: “I’m wise enough to know that any sentence with his name in will become a headline, so I just don’t use his name. It’s nothing personal. It’s just you have to feel you can trust a person you’re going to get into that level of work with.
“Lots of my lefty friends doubted I could work with George Bush, but he came through, as did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.”
Asked if Trump is on side, he added: “No, he’s trying to cut all that stuff at the moment, which is why I don’t want to be near him. If he’d put down the axe, maybe we could work with his administration. But we can’t with the sword of Damocles hanging.”
But Bono did recently meet Vice President Mike Pence because of his involvement in the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, which was founded in 2003.
Asked if he found him helpful, he said: “Well, we haven’t had the vicious cuts that the administration proposed.”
The ‘Vertigo’ singer has retained his friendships with many of the former presidents he has worked with, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
He said: “I saw the 44th president last week — I’m still close with Obama. He and his missus and his kids have been in our local pub.
“I don’t like to think of my relationships with these people as retail. Having gone through some stuff together, we stay together even when they’re out of office.
“I saw George Bush on his ranch. He spent $22m on antiretroviral drugs and I had to thank him for that.”
