Bono Rips Trump for Ending DACA: ‘This Country Was Built for Dreamers’

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U2 frontman Bono blasted President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind the DACA amnesty program on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday, after performing a politically-charged rendition of the Joshua Tree track “Bullet the Blue Sky.”

“It’s a strange place we find ourselves in. It’s dangerous out there when you have a little emperor there with a bad haircut and his finger on the nuclear arsenal. And a lot of people in silly costumes following me around. And then you have the dude from North Korea,” Bono joked about Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Later in the interview, the Irish rocker said the idea of America is being “twisted” following Trump’s decision to end DACA.

“Every night we’re reminded why we fell in love with this country,” Bono said. “And it’s not just a country; it’s an idea. It’s a great idea, one of the best ideas ever. But you can feel in recent times that idea get a bit twisted.”

“And then you have the ‘dreamers,’” he said, referring to the estimated 800,000 people who illegally entered the U.S. with their parents as children and who had been previously shielded from deportation, thanks to Obama’s controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty program.

“I mean, we’re Irish! We’re the ‘dreamers,'” Bono said. “This country was built for and by ‘dreamers.’ … If there’s no room for ‘dreamers,’ where are we in America? It’s the American dream!”

Earlier in the night, Bono changed the lyrics of the hit song “Bullet the Blue Sky” to negatively reference President Trump.

“Suit and tie comes up to me, face orange as the rose on a thorn bush/ Skin as thin as an Orange Crush/ He’s peeling off those dollar bills,” Bono sang on stage, in one altered anti-Trump lyric.

“Ground shakes, but the children can’t weep/ Vaporized in a single tweet/,” he sang in another scathing modified line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG9U_41ZXCU

The Irish rock band is currently on tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their iconic 1987 album Joshua Tree.

In June, U2 performed two politically charged performances in New Jersey in which Bono urged the American media to stay “vigilant” in the era of Trump and slammed the president’s immigration policies.

 

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

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