Donald Trump has hit back after Bruce Springsteen unleashed several blistering attacks on the US president at his Manchester concert.
The music legend made three separate rants against the ‘corruption’ and ‘incompetence’ of the Trump administration as he and the E Street Band performed the first of three scheduled shows at the Co-Op Live on Wednesday, opening his latest UK and European tour.
But now, Trump has retaliated with a rather brutal put-down of The Boss.
In a lengthy post that has generated thousands of reactions on Truth Social, the 78-year-old politician began: ‘I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States.’
Never missing an opportunity to take aim at predecessor Joe Biden, he continued: ‘Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just 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.’
Trump added: ‘If I wasn’t elected, it would have been GONE by now! Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is “dumb as a rock,” and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)?’
Saving arguably his most personal insult until last, he concluded: ‘This dried out “prune” of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just “standard fare.” Then we’ll all see how it goes for him! [sic]’
Trump’s rant comes after Springsteen began his gig earlier this week with a performance of Land of Hope and Dreams, telling the audience: ‘It’s great to be in Manchester and back in the UK. Welcome to the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour!
‘The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times.’
Springsteen, 75, continued: ‘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.
‘Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring!’
The Born in the USA artist made another political statement before a performance of House of a Thousand Guitars.
Springsteen declared: ‘The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people, you and me.
‘It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.’
The rocker wasn’t done there, though.
Having long been a staunch critic of Trump, Springsteen made another excoriating attack on the White House chief and his political ideology as he introduced City of Ruin.
‘There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous s**t going on out there right now. 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.
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‘In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society. 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. They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centres and prisons. This is all happening now.
The Glory Days singer added that ‘a majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.’
He blazed: ‘They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.’
Proudly patriotic, he finished by telling his adoring fans: ‘The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with great people. So we’ll survive this moment.’
In a bid to remain optimistic, Springsteen vowed to ‘have hope’ because he ‘believes in the truth of what the great American writer, James Baldwin, said’.
Quoting Baldwin, who wrote the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Springsteen recited: ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’
Springsteen isn’t the only American music icon to face the wrath of Trump this week, as the Apprentice star, posting from the United Arab Emirates at the tail end of his Middle East trip, also launched another attack on Taylor Swift.
Reviving his beef with the Grammy winner just minutes before posting his Springsteen rant, he wrote: ‘Has anyone noticed that, since I said “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” she’s no longer “HOT?”‘
Swift, one of the biggest-selling artists in music history and certainly of this generation, first broke her political silence a few years ago for her Miss Americana Netflix documentary.
She’s since taken several chances to make her views clear when it comes to the Republican party, while Trump lashed out at her during the 2024 election cycle when she endorsed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
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