Bruce Springsteen is using his voice to lambast President Trump, saying the country is “currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”
“There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent,” Springsteen, who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential race, said Monday as he kicked off his Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Manchester, England.
“In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death,” Springsteen continued.
“In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society,” he told the audience in video of the concert posted on social media.
“They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands,” the 75-year-old Grammy Award winner said.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it would freeze about $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard University after the Ivy League school said it would not comply with demands from the federal government, including implementing changes around protesting and diversity, equity and inclusion.
“They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now,” Springsteen said.
The Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act and immigration authorities to send hundreds of migrants it has alleged are gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
Springsteen slammed “a majority of our elected representatives” for failing to “protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”
“They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American,” the music star said of the lawmakers.
“The America that l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real,” Springsteen exclaimed, “and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment.”
At another point he urged “all who believe in democracy” to “raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!”
Springsteen endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 White House race, saying ahead of last year’s election that Trump was “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime.”
