May 19, 2025
And that reality has caused the president of the United States to lose it.
It will come as a surprise to no one that Donald Trump has never liked Bruce Springsteen.
Nor will it shock anyone familiar with the 47th presidentâs thin-skinned responses to even the mildest rebukes that Springsteenâs righteous determination to speak truth to powerâmost recently by decrying âan unfit president and a rogue governmentâ that has âno concern or idea for what it means to be deeply Americanââwould stir Trumpâs ire.
Still, there is something remarkable about the fact that, after Springsteen launched his European tour by declaring that the United States âis currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,â the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, would completely lose it.
But so he has. In a social media post sent Friday from Air Force One, as he was flying home from a toadying tour of the most blindingly regressive redoubts of Middle Eastern monarchy, an enraged Trump poured out scorn and menacing language.
âI see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States,â the president wrote about the songwriter and singer, who has earned 20 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Special Tony Award, Golden Globes and Kennedy Center Honors, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Presidential Medal of Freedomâthe last of which was presented by another of Trumpâs targets for vitriol, former President Barack Obama.
Trumpâs rant about Springsteen went on and on. âNever liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, heâs not a talented guy,â grumbled the president, who decried the singer as âJust a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country.â
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Trump concluded with a said-no-one-else-ever claim that âSpringsteen is dumb as a rock,â before spewing even more personal insults and what sounded to a lot of folks like a threat. âThis dried out âpruneâ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, thatâs just âstandard fare.â Then weâll all see how it goes for him!â
Never mind the stark cynicism of Trumpâs attacking an American for exercising his free speech rights while abroad, even as the president was interrupting his return journey from a controversial international trek to gripe about Supreme Court arguments, âRadical Left Losersâ (presumably Democrats) and âGrandstanderâ Republicans. And about iconic American pop star Taylor Swift (âsheâs no longer HOT!â). And about the son of New Jersey who taught us, âThe best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.â
What was particularly worthy of note, and concern, in Trumpâs Friday tirade was the last line, where the president speculated about how âweâll all see how it goes for himâŠâ That sounded threatening. And Trump followed through on Monday morning, with a call for âa major investigationâ into Springsteenâs endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. In a screed that also targeted Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Harris, and U2 singer Bono, who made no endorsement in the race, Trump accused Harris and Springsteen of engaging in campaign finance violations as part of âa very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. ITâS NOT LEGAL! For these unpatriotic âentertainers,â this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system.â
After a number of prominent entertainers endorsed Harris in 2024, Politico explained Monday, âRumors falsely circulated that the superstars were paid millions for their support, which their teams quickly shut down.â And Rolling Stone, noting Springsteenâs observation, âIn America, my home, theyâre persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent,â wrote Monday, âItâs apparently happening to Springsteen, who now might be placed under investigation for the transgression of supporting the political candidate of his choice and exercising his constitutionally protected right to criticize his government.â
Free-speech advocates have historically understood the targeting of presidential critics as an affront to the basic premise of democracyâparticularly in a country where a former Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, warned in 1918 that âto announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.â
Trumpâs increasingly intense diatribes have gotten a great deal of attention in recent days. But they have not caused Springsteen to back down. In fact, the musician ramped up his criticisms of the president over the weekend, telling a Manchester audience, âTonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.â
This conflict is not going away. But nothing Trump says, or does, will change the fact that Springsteen is a patriot in the tradition of Tom Paineâa proud American with the wisdom and the courage to challenge leaders who have gone awry while at the same time speaking, without irony or artifice, of âthe America I love, the America Iâve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years.â
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Springsteen is as true a poet of American democracy as Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie, Langston Hughes, or Nina Simone. And he is as true, and effective, a critic of factory-closing CEOs, Wall Streetâcoddling policymakers, and the oligarchs who abandon working-class towns and the people who live in them as Robert M. La Follette, Jesse Jackson, or Bernie Sanders.
âBruce Springsteen is an American icon who has spent five decades telling the story of blue-collar life in this country,â New Jersey US Representative Frank Pallone said of a working-class New Jerseyan who made good but never forgot where he came from. âOf course, Donald Trump wouldnât get it.â
Trump, a billionaire son of privilege whose idea of public service has always been to have the public serve his interests, never got the Springsteen whose songs championed forgotten veterans of the Vietnam War, laid-off steelworkers in Youngstown, people suffering with AIDS in Philadelphia, the abandoned farmers of rural Nebraska, or the brave firefighters and police officers who ran into the World Trade Center on 9/11. And Trump, with his penchant toward monarchical excess, will never understand the deeply American instinct of the songwriter who almost 50 years ago called out oligarchy with the lines:
Poor man wanna be rich
Rich man wanna be king
And a king ainât satisfied
âTil he rules everything
â
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