Bruce Springsteen rips into Trump’s ‘corrupt, treasonous administration’
Maybe Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security will conjure up some reason to bar Bruce Springsteen from returning to the United States, after the rock ‘n’ roll legend kicked off his “Land of Hope & Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, Wednesday night with a series of rousing, blistering speeches aimed at the “unfit” current president and his “treasonous” administration.
The dystopian vision of Trump’s America, which Springsteen painted Wednesday night, certainly sounds like a place where even an internationally revered, New Jersey-born artist like himself could face dire consequences for speaking out. But the “Born in the USA” singer didn’t hold back. Accompanied by the E Street Band, he summoned the “righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times,” according to The Guardian and the Daily Beast.
Introducing the song that gives the tour its name, Springsteen said: “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”
The multi-award-winning musician has been a vocal critic of both Trump administrations, while long supporting Democratic causes and candidates. He’s known to be a close friend of Barack Obama, with the two creating a podcast series together, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” The Guardian reported. Springsteen also campaigned for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s respective campaigns.
Later in the show, he introduced the song, “My City of Ruins,” with a lengthy speech that raised alarm about the “very weird, strange and dangerous (expletive) going on out there right now.”
In America, Springsteen said, people are being “persecuted for using their right to free speech and dissent,” “the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death,” and its leaders are taking “sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers” while “rolling back historic civil rights legislation.”
Springsteen also said the Trump administration is “abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators,” defunding U.S. universities that “won’t bow down to their ideological demands,” and “removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons.”
The singer also appeared to castigate politicians on both ends of the ideological spectrum, by saying that the “majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”
But Springsteen ended this speech with a message of hope, unity and fortitude, saying, “the America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment.”
As The Guardian said, such comments align with Springsteen’s lifetime of songwriting and performances, which praise American ideals but examine them against the reality of working-class life. He’s also known for delivering energetic concerts that can last for hours.
“The Land of Hope and Dreams Tour” is a continuation of the tour that Springsteen and the E Street Band originally began in 2023 in Tampa, Florida. A number of dates on the 2023 leg were postponed to 2024, including two nights at San Francisco’s Chase Center, due to Springsteen recovering from a peptic ulcer and other band members dealing with health issues. The 2025 European leg of the tour, which kicked off in Manchester Wednesday, was re-titled “The Land of Hope and Dreams Tour.” It winds up in Milan in early July.