A Grammy Award-winning rock star left White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stunned with his question about free speech and political asylum during Monday’s briefing.
Winston Marshall, the former banjoist with British folk group Mumford & Sons, called on President Trump to grant asylum to his fellow countrymen and -women who faced prosecutions over “hate speech” in the UK.
Marshall, who left the band in 2021, claimed that people in his country faced “extensive prison sentences for tweets, social media posts and general free speech issues,” before ramping up to his question.
“Would the Trump administration consider asylum for British citizens in such a situation?” asked Marshall, who now hosts his own podcast, “The Winston Marshall Show.”
Leavitt appeared taken aback by the question.
“I have not heard that proposed to the president nor have I spoken to him about that idea, but I certainly can talk to our national security team and see if it’s something the administration would entertain,” she replied.
Marshall, 37, was kicked out of Mumford & Sons over his criticism of COVID lockdowns, he previously wrote.
He shared his support for the book “Unmasked” by Andy Ngo in March 2021 on X.
“Over 24 hours it was trending with tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments,” he wrote in a column for DailyMail.com at the time.
His former bandmates headlined a swanky $50k per-ticket fundraiser for the Democrats in the Hamptons last August, Page Six first revealed, in Harris’ running mate Tim Walz’s first appearance in New York on the campaign trail.
Marshall left music and went on to create a podcast, “Marshall Matters,” for The Spectator, a conservative British publication owned by his father, Sir Paul Marshall.
He appeared in the White House Briefing Room on Monday as one of the recipients of the “new media” seat now placed there.
But his appearance polarized opinions online, between those who welcomed the space for “alternative media,” and others who questioned what expertise he had.
“He absolutely destroyed Nancy Pelosi at an Oxford Union Debate about Populism. And this is a valid question watching what’s going on in the UK,” one X user wrote.
“Thank you for raising this important issue,” a second X user wrote.
“Winston Marshall is fabulous. True patriot. Gave up his lucrative profession to fight for conservative views,” added a third X user.
But others were less kind.
“Retired banjo player Winston Marshall asking the White House to offer political asylum to British bigots,” one X user wrote.
“That well-known British reporter and member of the White House press pool, Winston Aubrey Aladar deBalkan Marshall,” another quipped on X, referencing Marshall’s full name, which reflects his family’s roots in France, Hungary and Romania.
Marshall was the latest public figure to accuse authorities in the UK of using “hate crime” definitions to clamp down on free speech.
It comes after the arrest of pro-life campaigner Adam Smith-Connor in 2023 after he refused to leave a safe zone around an abortion clinic.
“We have had a quarter of a million people issued non-hate crime incidents” since Smith-Connor’s arrest, Marshall claimed.
In the year ending March 2024, 140,561 hate crimes were recorded by police in England and Wales, down slightly on the 147,645 hate crimes recorded in the previous year, according to official government figures.
By far the largest number of hate crime arrests were race-related, followed by sexual orientation, disability, religion, and transgender-related hate crimes.
https://nypost.com/2025/04/29/us-news/mumford-amp-sons-alum-winston-marshall-asks-karoline-leavitt-about-free-speech/
