During the “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” special on Sunday, Green Day vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong made an anti-Trump statement. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, responded by calling out the band, and it was brutal.
While Billie Joe Armstrong was singing the words of Green Day’s hit song “American Idiot” from 2004, he substituted the song’s lyrics. Although it seemed like Armstrong had trouble with the lyrics, it was reported by multiple news outlets that he sang, “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda,” rather than the original phrase, “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda.”
This was a jab at Donald Trump and his supporters. On Monday, Elon Musk responded to a post about the incident on X, accusing the pop-punk band of deviating from its origins. “Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it,” said Musk, adding laughing emojis to his reply.
Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it 🤣🤣
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 1, 2024
The band, which was established in the East Bay region of California in 1987, has been vocally critical of conservative politicians for decades. Billie Joe Armstrong has never concealed his disdain for Donald Trump and other conservative political agendas. The comparison between former President Trump and Adolf Hitler was made by Armstrong in an interview with Kerrang! magazine in 2016.
“The worst problem I see about Trump is who his followers are,” Armstrong said. “I actually feel bad for them because they’re poor, working-class people who can’t get a leg up. They’re just p—ed off, and he’s preyed on their anger.”
“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!” Armstrong added. During a concert in 2018, the Green Day lead vocalist told his French audience that he “f—ing hate[d] Donald Trump so much.”
“I used to scream I hated George Bush,” Armstrong said. “This one is a little different. This one is bad, it’s like acid gone bad. F—ing LSD and the American right, man.” Meanwhile, many Americans are screaming that entertainers should stay out of politics, but that seems to be falling on deaf ears, perhaps from many years of playing loud music.
