The Media Research Center has long hated Bruce Springsteen for not being a right-winger, and that rage continued in an Oct. 1 post by Clay Waters:
The artsy self-regard was off the charts on Monday’s PBS News Hour, whose producers surely felt blessed that they were able to work into their “Arts in Action” segment, Bruce Springsteen’s surprise appearance at a New York film festival the night before, in which he called the Trump administration “treasonous.”\
[…]As their taxpayer funding elapsed, PBS was still goading the Left to be more fervently outspoken against Trump and shaming anyone who failed to do so.
Waters then tried tou justify Trump’s demand to launch lawfare on Springsteen for his activities in the 2024 presidential campaign:
Trump didn’t want them investigated for campaigning, it was about how or whether they were paid to appear. The Times reporter furthered the myth that artists have clammed up for fear of Trump reprisal.
Waters didn’t explain how, exactly, that made Trump’s lawfare campaign any better.
the MRC went on to attack Springsteen’s free speech:
- Geoffrey Dickens listed a Springsteen quote among his “worst” list of “celebrity freak-outs” for 2025.
- In January, Dickens nominated the lyrics to Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” to his weekly “worst quote of the week” post (it didn’t win).
- Springsteen was nominated again in April for saying at a “No Kings” rally that “The America that I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.” This time, he won — or in Dickens’ words, he “barely won in a squeaker with just 36 percent of the vote.” Dickens also put Springsteen’s quote in an April 10 list of quotes criticizing Trump’s bombing of Iran.
Tim Graham complained about Springsteen’s quote in his April 9 podcast: “He suggested his side favored ‘the rule of law over lawlessness.’ That’s just upside down, where the illegal aliens are following the rule of law and ICE agents are the ‘lawless’ ones.” Graham didn’t mention the lawless killing of civilians by ICE in Minnesota earlier this year.