Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong delivered an anti-Trump statement on Sunday’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” special. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded by criticizing the band.
Armstrong substituted the line “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda” for the song “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda” while singing the lyrics to the band’s 2003 smash song “American Idiot.”
Musk said the pop-punk group had strayed from its origins in a Monday post on X.
Musk said, with laughing emojis, “Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.”
From its founding in the East Bay of California in 1987, the band has long been loud in its criticism of politicians on the right.
Armstrong likened Adolf Hitler to the previous president Trump in a 2016 interview with Kerrang! magazine.
“The worst problem I see about Trump is who his followers are,” stated Armstrong. As a working-class, impoverished individuals who lack opportunities, I genuinely feel sorry for them. He has taken advantage of their ire and made them seem bad.”
All he said was, ‘I’m going to take care of it myself, and you have no other options.'” The vocalist of “Basket Case” said, “I mean, that’s f—— Hitler, man.”
At a 2018 performance, Armstrong confided in his French audience that he “f—— hate[d] Donald Trump so much.”
The lead singer said, “I used to scream I hated George Bush.” “A little different is this one. This is terrible, akin to acidic waste. The American right and fucking LSD, dude.”