Just a few weeks after dedicating a song to a concertgoer who handed him a Constitution scrawled with the phrase, “F*ck Trump,” rocker Bruce Springsteen ripped the Republican presidential candidate in an interview, calling him a “moron” whose candidacy is “tragic” for America.
Springsteen made the comment in excerpts from an interview with Rolling Stone published Friday, the day of his 67th birthday.
“The republic is under siege by a moron, basically. The whole thing is tragic,” the E Street Band leader told the outlet. “Without overstating it, it’s a tragedy for our democracy. When you start talking about elections being rigged, you’re pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it’s a very, very dangerous thing to do. Once you let those genies out of the bottle, they don’t go back in so easy, if they go back in at all.
Springsteen accused Trump of pushing ideas like “white nationalism” and the “alt-right movement” into the mainstream, though he appeared to understand the motivation behind the candidate’s political ascent.
“I believe that there’s a price being paid for not addressing the real cost of the deindustrialization and globalization that has occurred in the United States for the past 35, 40 years and how it’s deeply affected people’s lives and deeply hurt people to where they want someone who says they have a solution,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone.
“And Trump’s thing is simple answers to very complex problems. Fallacious answers to very complex problems. And that can be very appealing,” he added.
When interviewer Brian Hiatt asked if the rocker had lost any enthusiasm for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, “the Boss” replied that he had not.
“I like Hillary. I think she would be a very, very good president.” he said.
Springsteen’s full interview with Rolling Stone appears in the magazine’s upcoming issue.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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