Bruce Springsteen has said that his 2026 “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour with the E Street Band will be political, and he was not exaggerating.
On the tour’s opening night in Minneapolis, after starting the show with a cover of the Temptations’ fiery 1969 hit “War,” his comments were largely things he’s said before, at the “No Kings” in the city rally last weekend and elsewhere over the past year.
But mid-show, after the livestream of the show’s first two songs had ended, he let loose. Some of the comments in the speech he’s made before, including the familiar “This is happening now” refrain, but not all of them, and it’s likely that he’ll continue ramping up his war of words with the president often before the tour wraps just after Memorial Day Weekend — in Washington, D.C.
“We are living through some very dark times,” he began. “Our American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before. We’ve got our young men and women’s lives at risk In an unconstitutional and illegal war.
“This is happening now.
“There are immigrants being held in detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign gulags.
“This is happening now.
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“Our Justice Department has completely abdicated its independence, and our Attorney General Pam Bondi takes her marching orders straight from a corrupt White House.
“She prosecutes our president’s perceived enemies, covers up for his misdeeds.
“And protects his powerful friends.
“This is happening now.
“The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children through death and disease, through their dismantling of U.S. aid.
“This is happening now.
“We are abandoning NATO and the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years.
“This is happening now.
“We threaten our neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars with the predatory annexation of their land.
“This is happening now.
“Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth.
“This is happening now.
“While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars training on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history.
“This is happening now.
“This White House is destroying the American ideal and our reputation around the world.
“To many we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good, we are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“We are now to many America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration’s and this president’s legacy.
“This is happening now.
“Honesty, honor, humility, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength, and decency. Don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore.
“They do.
“They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we are, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children.
“So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people.
“So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.
“Are you with us?”
Springsteen repeated the last line several times.
In an interview prior to the tour kicking off, Springsteen said in an interview with the Minneapolis Star-News that he was well-prepared for negative feedback from the right over the political nature of the tour and anything he might say during the course of it.
“My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say, and then people get to say what they want to say about it.… I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I’m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I’m ready for all that.”
He added, ““don’t know of another time when the country has been as critically challenged and our basic ideas and values as critically challenged as they are right now,. I’d have to go back to 1968 when I was 18 years old to another moment when it felt like the country was so on edge and like it felt there was simply so much at stake as far as who we are and the country we want to be and the people we want to be. It’s a critical, critical moment.”
Minneapolis became a flash point for American outrage after local residents Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretty were shot to death by ICE agents during protests. Springsteen references Good’s death in “Streets of Minneapolis,” the anti-ICE protest song he released on Jan. 28.
Springsteen first publicly performed “Streets of Minneapolis” at a “Defend Minnesota” benefit concert in the city Jan. 30, where he performed at the famed First Avenue club alongside organizer Tom Morello, who is participating in the new tour as a guest guitarist. He returned to the area to sing it over the weekend at a massive “No Kings” rally in St. Paul on Saturday, three days prior to the tour kickoff.
Variety will have a full review of the Minneapolis tour kickoff on Wednesday.
Of course, Springsteen and Trump have exchanged combative comments well prior to the ICE shootings in January. In May 2025, the rocker opened an overseas tour in Manchester with a show that included a speech referring to a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration … taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers… They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.” Springsteen offered a variation on that speech every night on the tour.
In return, Trump called Springsteen “highly overrated … not a talented guy – just a pushy, obnoxious JERK.”
From Variety US