Bruce Springsteen says that Trump preys on struggling Americans, has no sense of decency or responsibility.
Legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen blasted Donald Trump in a recent BBC interview, stating that he is preying on struggling working class Americans and calling him a “flagrant, toxic narcissist who wants to “take down the entire democratic system with him” if he loses the election.
Speaking to BBC’s Channel 4 this week, Springsteen talked of the political and economic landscape in America these days.
I think what’s happened is very visible right now because the past forty years as the de-industrialization and the globalization has effected a lot of work lives, the issues that matter to a lot of hard-working folks haven’t been addressed. It’s like this: if I couldn’t be a musician anymore and I had to find something else to do, I have no idea what I’d do. I’d be at a loss. So your steel mill closes down, your factory moves south or moves overseas – that’s your life walking away from you. So it’s really a moment where their concerns have come to the front. Of course this usually only happens when someone wants your vote. But it has happened. So I think they are demanding a response of some sort and neither party has addressed their concerns.
“He’s really preyed upon that part of the country!”
Channel 4 host Matt Frei asked Springsteen if he could understand Donald Trump’s appeal to some Americans; Springsteen responded: “I know some Trump voters, you know. But I think that he’s really—he’s really preyed upon that part of the country, because he gives these very glib and superficial answers to very, very entrenched and very difficult problems, but they’re answers that sound pretty good if you’ve struggled for the past 20 or 30 years.” [emphasis added]
“Yeah, yeah, I can understand that there’s somebody with simple answers to very complicated questions, who sound[s] like they’re listening to you for the first time,” he continued.
Asked if he thought Trump supporters were racists, Springsteen responded that he didn’t believe you could make such a generalization.
“No, no, I don’t believe that—you can’t generalize like that. You know, I think—I think there’s all kinds of people that are interested in him for a variety of different reasons.”
“He’s such a flagrant, toxic narcissist…. He simply has no sense of decency and no sense of responsibility about him.”
Springsteen went on to call Trump a “flagrant, toxic narcissist who wants to “take down the entire democratic system with him” if he loses the election.
Well, the trouble at the moment is, is you have Donald Trump who is talking about rigged elections. And he’s not—he has a feeling he’s going to lose now, which he—of course, he is going to lose. … And he’s such a flagrant, toxic narcissist that he wants to take down the entire democratic system with him if he goes. If he could reflect on these things, maybe he’d have—but he’s such an un-reflective person. And he doesn’t—he simply has no sense of decency and no sense of responsibility about him. And the words that he’s been using over the past several weeks really are an attack on the entire democratic process. [emphasis added]
Asked if he thought that was dangerous, Springsteen replied:
Yeah it is. I think it’s very dangerous. He does have a lot of people’s ears and I don’t think he’s going to go quietly, gently into the good night. I think he’s going to make as big a mess as he can and I don’t know what that’s going to mean, but we’ll find out shortly.
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