Trump supporters bash Green Day over MAGA slam

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Green Day made the ears of Donald Trump’s supporters ring when singer Billie Joe Armstrong changed a line in American Idiot to make it clear he does not support the former U.S. president during a New Year’s Eve performance.

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As the punk trio thrashed their way through the 2004 hit, which was originally written to protest then-U.S. President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, Armstrong took a swipe at Trump’s Make America Great slogan by swapping the lyric “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” for “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda” while performing live on ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

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The change enraged Trump fans, who took to social media to try and cancel the San Francisco rockers as they trended on X.

“Green Day is now Green Done. Don’t they understand it’s no longer Hollywood Cool with the rest of us to take potshots at DJT? We the people are speaking!” wrote one person on Trump’s Truth Social platform.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer shared a clip of the performance with her 7430,000 followers on X and dismissed the band as “losers.”

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“Green Day is a woke joke,” a third person declared, while others blasted the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, calling them “has beens, “washed up” and “sellouts.”

“They are irrelevant and have 300 fans that might listen to them,” one person replied to a viral video of the performance.

With Trump the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party in this year’s coming election, one critic predicted Armstrong’s slam was just the start of an orchestrated campaign against the businessman.

“This is the B team,” they wrote about Green Day’s lyric change. “Wait till they break out Taylor Swift.”

But plenty of Green Day fans backed the band, with one writing, “To the bitches bitching: Green Day was never on your side. American Idiot came out in 2004, who was president then? EXACTLY. That album was a middle finger to Dubya … you were just too stupid to realize it.”

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This isn’t the first time the band has taken a swipe at the former president.

During the American Music Awards in November 2016, Armstrong chanted “No Trump, no K.K.K., no fascist U.S.A.!” during a rendition of Bang Bang. Earlier that same month, Armstrong altered lyrics in American Idiot as he sang, “Can you hear the sounds of hysteria? The subliminal Trump America.”

The summer before the 2016 election, Armstrong compared Trump to Hitler in an interview with Kerrang.

“The worst problem I see about Trump is who his followers are,” he told the outlet [per Entertainment Weekly]. “I actually feel bad for them, because they’re poor, working-class people who can’t get a leg up. They’re pissed off and he’s preyed on their anger.”

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Armstrong continued: “He just said, ‘You have no options and I’m the only one, and I’m going to take care of it myself.’ I mean, that’s f***ing Hitler, man! … I don’t even know how else to explain it. Wish I were over-exaggerating. And sometimes maybe I do over-exaggerate with Bush. But with Trump, I just can’t wait ’til he’s gone.”

Then, at a small concert in the South of France in 2018, Armstrong likened Trump to “acid gone bad.”

“I f***ing hate Donald Trump so much,” he told the crowd. “I used to scream I hated George Bush. This one is a little different. This one is bad, it’s like acid gone bad. F***ing LSD and the American Right, man.”

Trump has yet to respond to Armstrong’s slam, but during a New Year’s event at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., the billionaire predicted a return to power later this year.

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“We’re going to win it a third time,” he told gatherers at Mar-a-Lago in a video shared to X. “We’re going to have a great 2024.”

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Trump also hit out at U.S. President Joe Biden and his political enemies in a fiery post on his Truth Social platform.

“As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to crooked Joe Biden and his group of radical left misfits and thugs on their never-ending attempt to destroy our nation through lawfare, invasion and rigging elections,” Trump said in the post [per Newsweek].

“They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into sour (sic) country, in order that they will be ready to vote in the presidential election of 2024.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

X: @markhdaniell

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