Recommendations of the Editorial team
When Bruce Springsteen announced the North American leg of his “Land of Hope and Dreams Tour” earlier this week, he did so with another not-so-subtle dig at President Donald Trump.
In a statement, he promised fans that he and the E Street Band will “celebrate and defend your city – America, American democracy, American freedom, our American Constitution and our sacred American dream – all of which are under attack by our would-be king and his renegade government in Washington DC.”
While such rebukes have drawn direct responses from Trump in the past, Springsteen’s pointed tour announcement appears to have passed the president by. Instead, it took a request from Politico to the White House to get a statement from Senior Communications Director Steven Cheung.
Pun attack from the White House
“When this loser Springsteen returns home to his own City of Ruins in his head, he will realize that his glory days are behind him and his fans have left him Out in the Street, putting him in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out because he is suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has left his brain rotting.”
While the message is obvious enough, let’s put it this way: This shaggy (born to) run-on sentence could have used a little editing. “Left him out in the street” and “putting him in a tenth avenue freeze-out” seem a bit redundant. And what does it even mean when Springsteen returns “to his own City of Ruins in his head”?
Ongoing criticism of Trump
Springsteen has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics throughout Trump’s political career, but the rocker has increased that since the start of the president’s second term last year. This year alone, he has spoken out strongly against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and even released a protest song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” following the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE in January. (The White House called the song “random” and “irrelevant” at the time.)
As for his upcoming tour, perhaps not coincidentally, it begins on March 31st in Minneapolis. And it ends on May 27th in Nationals Park in Washington, DC. The choice of cities is quite symbolic and underlines the political charge of the concert series.
