Making their voices heard, Green Day slammed President-elect Donald Trump at the 2016 American Music Awards during a heated performance of their 2016 track “Bang Bang." For the politically charged number, the band’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, tweaked the song’s lyrics and repeatedly chanted, "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA."
It's a line that stretches all the way back to the early Eighties, when the hardcore group M.D.C. clashed with Nazis in Austin, Texas, so they wrote the song "Born to Die" about it. The track would make its debut recorded performance on the band's 1982 LP, Millions of Dead Cops. At the time, however, singer Dave Dictor was chanting, "No war, no KKK, no fascist USA." Armstrong and his bandmates played with M.D.C. in the past, so the lyric has likely stuck with them over the years.
Billie Joe Armstrong and Co. appeared on The Late Late Show last Tuesday to discuss their moment of protest. "We didn't rehearse it," the lead singer explained, as fans whooped and cheered. "We're just as much in shock as everybody else is about this," he added. "But I think with the AMAs [performance], it was a good start to challenge [Trump] on all of his ignorant policies and his racism."
Green Day previously spoke out about Trump during the 2016 MTV Europe Music Awards on Monday, November 7, just one day before the election. They changed the “subliminal mind-America” lyric of “American Idiot” to “subliminal mind-Trump America.” The band’s vocal opposition to the business mogul turned politician seems to be a direct response to the anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric he encouraged throughout his controversial campaign.
During an interview with Kerrang in August, Armstrong also compared Trump to Hitler. “I don’t even know how else to explain it,” he said. “I wish I were over-exaggerating. And sometimes maybe I do over-exaggerate with Bush. But with Trump, I just can’t wait ‘till he’s gone!"
This isn’t the first time Armstrong has spoken against Trump. Through social media he communicated his disappointment with the outcome of the election. “Our social progress got punched in the face. Hard,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “It's hard to tell if we made any progress at all.. the dark side of our better angels have spoken.. they gloat.. they cheer.. I pity them.”
Trump has yet to take to Twitter to comment on the performance. Instead, he expressed his disdain for
Us Weekly found a tweet from 2010 saying he enjoyed the Broadway show based on the band’s concept album, American Idiot. "Melania and I saw American Idiot on Broadway last night and it was great. An amazing theatrical experience!"
