If you’ve been on the internet today, you probably noticed that Green Day took time during their performance at the American Music Awards to blast President-elect Donald Trump. An instrumental interlude during Revolution Radio cut “Bang Bang” saw Billie Joe Armstrong (who seems to have revitalized the classic American Idiot-era attire) take the mic and strut to the front of the stage, leaning into the crowd and leading a chant of “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”
As TMZ reports, major broadcast company ABC didn’t actually sign off on this, as Green Day had rehearsed “Bang Bang” sans the political section. Very punk. The producers of the show are yet to release any sort of statement about the performance, but it’s probably fair to say that they aren’t happy, especially since the broadcast’s ratings hit an all-time low.
For more than a decade now, Green Day have been releasing politically-charged records (disregarding the ill-advised 2012 ¡UNO! ¡DOS! ¡TRÉ! trilogy like the band seems to be) right up to their most recent effort, October’s Revolution Radio. Billie Joe Armstrong previously compared Trump to Hitler, and made sure to call out the then-candidate during the band’s recent club tour. Check out video of the AMA performance, including the anti-Trump chant, below.
