Bruce Springsteen has made it clear that he is not a fan of Donald Trump.
The legendary rock star kicked the European leg of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour with a concert in Manchester, England, on Wednesday.
Springsteen immediately let fans know his feelings on the current President by bashing the Trump administration and its policies.
“It’s great to be in Manchester and back in the UK,” Springsteen told the crowd, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times.”
The 75-year-old singer then really got into it.
“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,” Springsteen continued. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”
Springsteen’s criticism continued throughout the show.
“There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous (expletive) going on out there right now,” he said at one point. “In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. 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 moral society. They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.”
The rock star did offer some hope for the future, though.
“The America that I have sung to you about for 50 years is real,” Springsteen said. “Regardless of its faults, it’s a great country with great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.”
Springsteen typically avoids talking politics, USA Today noted, making his comments incredibly rare.
“One of the artist’s jobs (is) to make sense of existence and to make sense of the current times that you live in, and to contextualize those times,” he recently told Variety. “Every artist does it in a different way. So I’ve got that on my mind, and I’m sure it’ll be reflected in our next leg of the tour.”
The Manchester show was the first of 16 that Springsteen is slated to play on the tour.
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