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 Struggle II and comprises relics from the nation’s darkish Nazi previous.
“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism, and let freedom reign,” he stated.
Springsteen has made more and more pointed and contentious public statements in latest live shows. He peppered Wednesday’s efficiency with mentions of the American democracy’s system of checks and balances designed to ward in opposition to 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 past 50 years of my life is real. And regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with great people. And we will survive this moment.”
However final month in Manchester, he denounced Trump’s politics throughout a live performance, calling him an “unfit president” main a “rogue government” of people that have “no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.”
Springsteen is not any stranger to Berlin. In July 1988, he turned one of many first Western musicians to carry out in East Germany, performing to a ravenous crowd of 160,000 East Germans craving for American rock ’n’ roll and the liberty it represented to the youth dwelling beneath the crumbling communist regime.
“I’m not here for or against any government. I’ve come to play rock ’n’ roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will 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 through the sky” and lots of of individuals within the viewers waved handmade American flags as they sang alongside to “Born in the USA.”
The Berlin Wall fell the next yr, and a few consultants credit score the live performance for its half in fueling the protest motion that introduced the top of the Communist authorities.
Virtually 4 a long time 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.”
