BERLIN (AP) — Veteran rock star Bruce Springsteen, a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump, slammed the U.S. administration as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” throughout a live performance Wednesday in Berlin.
He was addressing tens of hundreds of followers at a stadium constructed for the 1936 Olympic Video games that also bears the scars of World Warfare II and incorporates relics from the nation’s darkish Nazi previous.
“Tonight, we ask all who imagine in democracy and the most effective of our American experiment to rise with us, elevate your voices, stand with us towards authoritarianism, and let freedom reign,” he stated.
Springsteen has made more and more pointed and contentious public statements in latest concert events. He peppered Wednesday’s efficiency with mentions of the American democracy’s system of checks and balances designed to ward towards authoritarianism.
His brief speeches — referencing latest headlines about immigration raids, the freezing of federal funds for universities and measles outbreaks — got here between songs that have been additionally captioned in German on massive screens beside the stage. The set was flanked by an American flag on one facet and a German flag on the opposite.
Nonetheless, the Boss remained hopeful: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for the previous 50 years of my life is actual. And no matter its many faults, it’s an important nation with nice individuals. And we are going to survive this second.”
However final month in Manchester, he denounced Trump’s politics throughout a live performance, calling him an “unfit president” main a “rogue authorities” of people that have “no concern or concept for what it means to be deeply American.”
Springsteen isn’t any stranger to Berlin. In July 1988, he grew to become one of many first Western musicians to carry out in East Germany, performing to a roaring crowd of 160,000 East Germans craving for American rock ’n’ roll and the liberty it represented to the youth residing beneath the crumbling communist regime.
“I’m not right here for or towards any authorities. I’ve come to play rock ’n’ roll for you within the hope that at some point all of the obstacles will probably be torn down,” Springsteen stated in German on the time, earlier than launching into a canopy of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”
An Related Press information story from that interval says “fireworks streaked via the sky” and a whole lot of individuals within the viewers waved handmade American flags as they sang alongside to “Born within the USA.”
The Berlin Wall fell the next yr, and a few specialists credit score the live performance for its half in fueling the protest motion that introduced the tip of the Communist authorities.
Virtually 4 many years later, Springsteen issued a stark warning: “The America that I really like, the America that I’ve sung to you about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is presently within the palms of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”
The rocker closed Wednesday’s three-hour present with “Chimes of Freedom.”