Donald Trump fires back at Bruce Springsteen, calling him 'dried-out prune of a rocker' (2025)

PresidentDonald Trump is responding to Bruce Springsteen's fiery take on his second presidency, which the singer delivered the opening night of his new Land of Hope and Dreams tour.

Two days after Springsteen told fans in Manchester, England, that Trump was leading "a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration," Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to address the artist, whom he called a "dried-out prune of a rocker."

"I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States," Trump posted on Friday morning. "Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he's not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country."

Suggesting that the country would be "gone by now" if he hadn't been elected again, Trump seemed to warn of a backlash from his supporters if the musician made similar comments about him when he returned to the United States.

"Springsteen is 'dumb as a rock,' and couldn't see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)?" Trump wrote. "This dried-out 'prune' of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country. That's just 'standard fare.' Then we'll all see how it goes for him!"

Springsteen did not shy away from sharing his thoughts on Trump's presidency during his concert at Manchester's Co-Op Live arena on Wednesday.

"The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times," the Boss told the crowd in footage captured by a concertgoer and shared on social media. "In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about, and [that] has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring."

He returned to the subject later in his set. "In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death," Springsteen said before singing his 2002 song "My City of Ruins," perBillboard. "And in my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they are rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and moral society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom."

Springsteen has spoken out against Trump before. Last October, heendorsed Trump's presidential opponent Kamala Harris, and the singer endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. When he backed Harris, Springsteen called Trump "the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime."

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"Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually, and emotionally divided as it does than at this moment," he said at the time. "It doesn't have to be this way."

The artist behind songs such as "Born in the U.S.A," "The River," and "My Hometown" said he was standing behind the Democratic candidates for president and vice president because he thought their policies mirrored the "vision of America" he has been "consistently writing about for 55 years."