Green Day took the stage during ABC’s broadcast of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest and used the opportunity to call out Donald Trump supporters by changing the lyrics to their 2004 hit “American Idiot.”
Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong drew cheers from the live audience when he sang out, “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda” during his performance. The original line is, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.”
“American Idiot,” which the punk trio wrote in response to 9/11 and the policies of George W. Bush’s administration, is among the band’s most political songs, and although the band has tweaked the lyrics to take a swipe at the right wing before, Trump supporters still had a meltdown over Sunday’s performance.
Many of them took to Twitter to bash the band and accuse them of being part of the “propaganda machine.” “Sad, they are irrelevant and get a chance to play and use it poorly. Green Day has been bad for years,” one person wrote.
But Green Day have always been particularly outspoken about Trump: This summer, after devastating wildfires in Maui, Green Day manufactured a bunch of T-shirts with the word “nimrod” pasted over Trump’s mugshot and sold them to support people affected by the fires. During the band’s tour back in 2017, Armstrong would shout “Fuck you, Trump!” before launching into “American Idiot.”
“I want people to feel unity when they come to a show. At the same time, I’m not going to puss out on saying what I feel about him and his administration,” he told Rolling Stone that year.
“There are a lot of people in the quote-unquote red states that get a big sense of relief when I say something like ‘Fuck you, Trump.’ That’s because they’re in the minority where they live and at our shows they get this sort of release,” he continued.
The band, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, is preparing to release a new album this month. The project, which marks Green Day’s 14th LP, is called Saviors and will be out Jan. 19.
Dick Clark Productions, which produces New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between PMC and Eldrige. PMC is the parent company of Rolling Stone.