October is upon us, putting us that much closer to the release of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Ok, we’re still three weeks away from the Boss biopic that stars Jeremy Allen White as Bruce while he was making the album Nebraska, with Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau, and newly-minted Emmy winner Stephen Graham as Bruce’s father during flashback scenes. It’s a funny quirk of fate that this role marks back-to-back years of Jeremy Strong playing mentors, particularly when you consider the two mentees: Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump. Last year Strong earned his first Oscar nomination for playing Roy Cohn who, among his many sins, trained a young Trump in the vitriolic, litigious playbook we’re suffering through today. I find Strong’s film connection to Bruce and Don funny (in the Greek tragedy sense of the word) given how diametrically opposed the men are. Well, one man and one tiny-fisted bigly baby. Bruce has been calling out the president’s crimes all year, and continued the trend in a new profile with Time magazine:
“I absolutely couldn’t care less what he thinks about me,” the rock legend told Time magazine in a story published Thursday. “He’s the living personification of what the 25th Amendment and impeachment were for. If Congress had any guts, he’d be consigned to the trash heap of history.”
The 20-time Grammy winner sounds like he’ll keep dishing it out to Trump and Co.
“If I’m going to stay true to who I’ve tried to be… I can’t give these guys a free pass,” Springsteen told Time. “A lot of people bought into his lies… He doesn’t care about the forgotten anybody but himself and the multibillionaires who stood behind him on Inauguration Day.”
“You have to face the fact that a good number of Americans are simply comfortable with his politics of power and dominance,” Springsteen.
The president and Springsteen won’t be dancing in the dark any time soon.
On the first date of his European tour in May, Springsteen said America “is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.” He also asked democracy lovers to “raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Trump wrote back on Truth Social that Springsteen was “HIGHLY OVERRATED,” “dumb as a rock” and “a JERK” whose skin had “atrophied.” He also told the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to “KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT.”
Despite his fervent opposition to Trump over the years, the “Born to Run” legend didn’t sing the praises of the Democratic Party in his Time interview.
“We’re desperately in need of an effective party, or for the Democratic Party to find someone who can speak to the majority of the nation,” he said. “There is a problem with the language that they’re using and the way they’re trying to reach people.”
“He’s the living personification of what the 25th Amendment and impeachment were for. If Congress had any guts, he’d be consigned to the trash heap of history.” YASS, Bruce! Dementia Don was always going to be an impeached president — and becoming the first to merit it twice was no less than he deserved. But if these long, painful, soul-crushing eight months of a second term have shown us anything, it’s a portrait of a man in cognitive decline. When he’s not making stark raving mad rants at the august body of the United Nations General Assembly, he’s sending in the National Guard to Democratic Portland, Oregon… based on footage of riots that happened five years ago. At least that’s what Oregon Governor Tina Kotek strongly suspects after a phone call with the president over the weekend. If that isn’t 25th Amendment behavior, I don’t know what is. Bruce completely has Don’s number, and I hope he keeps letting it rip because we all know how much it rankles the dried out mango. Though I do disagree with Bruce on one point, the suggestion that Don only cares about “himself and the multibillionaires who stood behind him on Inauguration Day.” He doesn’t care about them either, just himself. A tale of two men: Bruce and Don, the Boss and the Loss.
Photos credit: Unanue/Europa Press/Avalon, Mike Gray/Avalon, Getty, Backgrid
