{"id":557799,"date":"2026-04-01T07:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557799\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:48:08","slug":"bruce-springsteen-says-trump-cant-handle-the-truth-in-minneapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/557799\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Springsteen Says Trump ‘Can’t Handle the Truth’ in Minneapolis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBruce Springsteen<\/a> has said that his 2026 \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams\u201d tour<\/a> with the E Street Band will be political, and he was not exaggerating.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the tour\u2019s opening night in Minneapolis, after starting the show with a cover of Motown singer Edwin Starr\u2019s fiery 1970 hit \u201cWar,\u201d his comments were largely things he\u2019s said before, at the \u201cNo Kings\u201d in the city rally last weekend and elsewhere over the past year.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut mid-show, after the livestream of the show\u2019s first two songs had ended, he let loose. Some of the comments in the speech he\u2019s made before, including the familiar \u201cThis is happening now\u201d refrain, but not all of them, and it\u2019s likely that he\u2019ll continue ramping up his war of words with the president often before the tour wraps just after Memorial Day Weekend \u2014 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are living through some very dark times,\u201d he began. \u201cOur American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before. We\u2019ve got our young men and women\u2019s lives at risk In an unconstitutional and illegal war.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are immigrants being held in detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign gulags.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur Justice Department has completely abdicated its independence, and our Attorney General Pam Bondi takes her marching orders straight from a corrupt White House.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe prosecutes our president\u2019s perceived enemies, covers up for his misdeeds.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd protects his powerful friends.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe richest men in America have abandoned the world\u2019s poorest children through death and disease, through their dismantling of U.S. aid.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are abandoning NATO and the world order that\u2019s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe threaten our neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars with the predatory annexation of their land.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur 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\u2019t handle the truth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhile working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars training on the people\u2019s office in corruption unmatched in American history.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis White House is destroying the American ideal and our reputation around the world.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are now to many America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration\u2019s and this president\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is happening now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHonesty, honor, humility, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength, and decency. Don\u2019t let anybody tell you that these things don\u2019t matter anymore.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey do.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we are, the kind of country we\u2019ll be leaving to our children.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo join us and let\u2019s fight for the America that we love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAre you with us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpringsteen repeated the last line several times. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview prior to the tour kicking off, Springsteen told Jon Bream of the Minnesota Star-Tribune<\/a> that he was well-prepared for negative feedback from the right over the political nature of the tour and anything he might say during the course of it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say, and then people get to say what they want to say about it.\u2026 I don\u2019t worry about if you\u2019re going to lose this part of your audience,\u201d he told the newspaper. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I\u2019m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I\u2019m ready for all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added, \u201c\u201cdon\u2019t know of another time when the country has been as critically challenged and our basic ideas and values as critically challenged as they are right now,. I\u2019d have to go back to 1968 when I was 18 years old to another moment when it felt like the country was so on edge and like it felt there was simply so much at stake as far as who we are and the country we want to be and the people we want to be. It\u2019s a critical, critical moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMinneapolis became a flash point for American outrage after local residents Ren\u00e9e Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretty were shot to death by ICE agents during protests. Springsteen references Good\u2019s death in \u201cStreets of Minneapolis,\u201d the anti-ICE protest song he released on Jan. 28.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpringsteen first publicly performed \u201cStreets of Minneapolis\u201d at a \u201cDefend Minnesota\u201d benefit concert in the city Jan. 30, where he performed at the famed First Avenue club alongside organizer Tom Morello, who is participating in the new tour as a guest guitarist. He returned to the area to sing it over the weekend at a massive \u201cNo Kings\u201d rally in St. Paul on Saturday, three days prior to the tour kickoff.<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety will have a full review of the Minneapolis tour kickoff on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, Springsteen and Trump have exchanged combative comments well prior to the ICE shootings in January. In May 2025, the rocker opened an overseas tour in Manchester with a show that included a speech referring to a \u201ccorrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration \u2026 taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers\u2026 They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.\u201d Springsteen offered a variation on that speech every night on the tour. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn return, Trump called Springsteen \u201chighly overrated \u2026 not a talented guy \u2013 just a pushy, obnoxious JERK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Springsteen has said that his 2026 \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams\u201d tour with the E Street Band…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[16755,88],"class_list":["post-557799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}