Donald Trump took a break from serving as the leader of the free world on May 16 to write a borderline incoherent screed against Bruce Springsteen, just after the songwriter blasted him at the inaugural date of his 2025 European tour.
“Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’” Trump wrote, “and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? 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!”
Three days later, Trump took another shot at Springsteen in an even crazier post that also referenced Bono and Oprah Winfrey. “HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?” he wrote. “WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? …AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter. Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment.”
Let’s put aside the fact that basically everything Trump wrote here is absurd and false on nearly every imaginable level. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that he’s acting like Springsteen’s stance is somehow new or surprising. Springsteen has been an extremely vocal critic from nearly the moment Trump came down the golden escalator in 2015. Here’s a look back at what he’s said about Trump over the years.
September 23, 2016 : ‘The Republic Is Under Siege By a Moron’
At the height of the 2016 campaign, Springsteen vented his feelings about Trump in an interview with Rolling Stone. “The republic is under siege by a moron, basically,” he said. “The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it’s a tragedy for our democracy…The ideas he’s moving to the mainstream are all very dangerous ideas — white nationalism and the alt-right movement. The outrageous things that he‘s done — not immediately disavowing David Duke? These are things that are obviously beyond the pale for any previous political candidate. It would sink your candidacy immediately.”
October 18, 2016: ‘He’s a Conman and They’re Getting Played’
Springsteen continued speaking his mind when he headed over to Europe to promote his new memoir, Born to Run. “You have 30 to 40 years of deindustrialisation and the globalization of the economy, so there were a lot of people who were left out of that, whose voices have been fundamentally ignored and not heard,” he told the BBC. “These are folks who feel that Donald Trump has been listening to them and speaks for them on some level. I think he’s a conman and they’re getting played.”
November 7, 2016: ‘[Trump] Is a Man Whose Vision Is Limited to Little Beyond Himself’
Springsteen was busy promoting his memoir with a series of bookstore appearances across America and Europe in the final days of the 2016 campaign, but he took a brief break to perform at a Hillary Clinton rally outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall the evening before the election. “[Trump] is a man whose vision is limited to little beyond himself, who has a profound lack of decency that would allow him to prioritize his own interests and ego before American democracy itself,” Springsteen said. “Somebody who’d be willing to damage our long-cherished and admired system rather than look to himself for the reasons behind his own epic failure. That’s unforgivable.”
October 12, 2017: ‘They Want to Destroy the Idea of America For All’
The original incarnation of Springsteen on Broadway ran for 236 shows between 2017 and 2018. He didn’t mention Trump by name onstage, but he still made his views on the administration quite clear. “These are the times when we’ve also seen folks marching, and in the highest offices of our land who want to speak to our darkest angels, who want to call up the ugliest and the most divisive ghosts of America’s past, and they want to destroy the idea of an America for all,” he told the crowd. “That’s their intention. That’s what we’ve been seeing in the outrage of the broken families on the border, and in hate-filled marches on American streets, this year. Things I never thought I would see again in my lifetime. Things that I thought that were dead and gone forever, on the ash heap of history.”
September 20, 2020: ‘Get the Trump Administration Out of Office and Start Again’
Springsteen’s 2007 LP Magic was basically a concept album about George W. Bush’s America. But in 2020, Springsteen told Rolling Stone that he didn’t feel like addressing Trump directly when crafting songs for Letter To You. “That would be the most boring album in the world,” he said. But he spoke candidly while promoting it. “The power of the American idea has been abandoned,” Springsteen said. “It’s a terrible shame, and we need somebody who can bring that to life again…I think if we get Joe Biden, it’s gonna go a long way towards helping us regain our status around the world. The country as the shining light of democracy has been trashed by the administration. We abandoned friends, we befriended dictators, we denied climate science…The first thing is to get the Trump administration out of office and start again.”
October 31, 2020: ‘The Greatest Threat to Democracy in My Lifetime’
The pandemic made traditional outdoor campaign rallies largely impossible. But Springsteen still found helped out the Biden campaign by using his SiriusXM show From My Home to Yours to bash Trump in an epidote he called Farewell to the Thief. “A good portion of our fine country, to my eye, has been thoroughly hypnotized, brainwashed by a conman from Queens,” he said. “And you mix in some jingoism, some phony patriotism, fear of a black planet, vanity, narcissism, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and a portion of our nation undergoing mass delusions and teetering on violence, and you’re left with the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
October 3, 2024: ‘He Doesn’t Understand the Meaning of This Country’
There was little need for Springsteen to focus on Trump during the Biden years. But once Trump became the 2024 candidate, Bruce rallied the public against him. And weeks before the election, he officially endorsed Kamala Harris in a video he cut at a New Jersey diner. “[Trump’s] disdain for the sanctity of our Constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law, and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again,” Springsteen said. “He doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American.”
October 24, 2024: ‘Donald Trump Is Running to Be an American Tyrant’
With days left before the election, Springsteen appeared at a Harris rally in Clarkston, Georgia. “There is only one candidate in this election who holds those principles, dear. Kamala Harris,” he said. “She’s running to be the 47th president of the United States. Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant. He does not understand this country, its history, or what it means to be deeply American.”
May 14, 2025: ‘A Corrupt, Incompetent, and Treasonous Administration’
Despite all of Springsteen’s efforts, Trump won the 2024 election. Springsteen held his tongue until the start of his Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Manchester, England on May 14. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” Springsteen told the crowd after walking onstage. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
May 17, 2025: ‘They’re Taking Sadistic Pleasure in the Pain They Inflict on Loyal American Workers’
Trump responded to Springsteen’s statements with predictable fury. It didn’t stop Springsteen by speaking out again on the second night of the tour, largely echoing what he said on the first night. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death,” he said. “That’s happening now. 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 led to a more just society. They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those who are struggling for their freedom. That’s happening now. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. And they are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers and prisons. That’s happening now.”
