Ha Ha....

Green Day sparks conservative backlash for Trump mask

By Timothy Karoff

One night into Green Day’s tour, the group is already stirring the pot.

On the first night of the Bay Area pop-punk outfit’s The Saviors Tour, the band kicked up a minor social media firestorm after frontman Billie Joe Armstrong held up a rubber Donald Trump mask with the word “idiot” scrawled on its forehead. As Consequence reported and one attendee corroborated, a fan at the Washington, D.C., concert tossed the mask to Armstrong onstage. The singer apparently improvised with his new prop.

“We are the kids of war and peace, from Anaheim to the Middle East,” Armstrong chants in a video shared on social media, dangling the mask above his head before flinging it back into the crowd.

The backlash arrived swiftly. “Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Holds Up Rubber Donald Trump Head at Concert Less than a Month After Assassination Attempt,” conservative news site Breitbart wrote. The Daily Mail compared the gesture to comedian Kathy Griffin’s severed Trump head stunt in 2017; conservative news site Daily Caller described it as being "in pretty disgusting taste."

On X, one conservative internet personality described the rubber mask as “a severed Trump head” and described the move as threatening, especially two weeks after the assassination attempt.

“These people are SICK,” he wrote.

The “severed Trump head” discourse, while biting, isn’t quite accurate, as the mask appeared store-bought and displayed no sign of violence. Armstrong wore a similar “idiot” rubber mask of George W. Bush while touring to support “American Idiot,” and this was potentially the model for the fan’s “idiot” Trump mask.

It’s nothing new for Armstrong, whose politically charged and provocative antics are a staple of the band’s live performances. When Green Day performed at the 2016 American Music Awards, he started a “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” chant. The frontman frequently swaps out song lyrics to take aim at the political target of the day; at a recent surprise show in San Francisco, he took aim at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and at Monday’s D.C. show, he changed an “American Idiot” lyric to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”

One X user summarized the situation: “republicans are finally learning that green day dislikes them for the 20th year in a row.”