Bruce Springsteen Opens Tour in Minneapolis With Fiery Anti-Trump Speech

AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt

Bruce Springsteen launched his latest tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which has been at the center of the debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and took the opportunity to turn the concert stage into a bully pulpit.

The Boss has been a longtime critic of the president, campaigning for then-Vice President Kamala Harris and continuing to be outspoken during Trump’s second term. Earlier this year, Springsteen released a new song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” about the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens: Renee Good on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

In Minneapolis with his E Street Band and guest guitarist Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello on Tuesday evening, Springsteen told the crowd, “We are living through some very dark times,” and delivered a scathing anti-Trump monologue, as reported by Variety:

Our American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before. We’ve got our young men and women’s lives at risk in an unconstitutional and illegal war. This is happening now.

There are immigrants being held in detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign gulags. This is happening now.

Our Justice Department has completely abdicated its independence, and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, takes her marching orders straight from a corrupt White House. She prosecutes our president’s perceived enemies, covers up for his misdeeds and protects his powerful friends. This is happening now.

The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children through death and disease, through their dismantling of USAID. This is happening now.

We are abandoning NATO and the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. This is happening now.

We threaten our neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars with the predatory annexation of their land. This is happening now.

Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth. This is happening now.

While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history. This is happening now.

This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. To many, we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration’s and this president’s legacy. This is happening now.

Honesty, honor, humility, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength, and decency — don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore. They do. They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we are, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children. So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.

Are you with us?

According to Variety’s report, Springsteen “repeated the last line several times as the E Street Band kicked into ‘My City in Ruins,’ a bittersweet anthem that was originally written about Asbury Park, then came to be about post-9/11 New York, and now appears in his set as an implicit commentary on a riven America.”

Later in the more than three-hour set, Springsteen told concertgoers that Good and Pretti’s deaths were what inspired him to quickly organize this tour, and said these were “hard times, but we’ll make it through,” and urged the audience to “do as Renée did: find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action to defend our country’s ideals. And as the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, ‘Go out and get in some good trouble.’ Say something, do something. Hell, sing something.”

“If you’re feeling helpless, hopeless, betrayed, frustrated, angry, I know,” he continued. “I mean, that’s why the E Street Band is here tonight. This is a tour that was not planned. We’re here tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength, and we want to bring some hope and some strength for you. I hope we did that. All I can say is God bless Alex Pretti, God bless Renee Good, God bless you and God bless America.”

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