During the Dropkick Murphys’ St. Patrick’s Day run of shows in Boston on Saturday, singer and founder of the band Ken Casey blasted a fan for waving around a MAGA hat in the crowd. “This is America, there’s no kings here,” he said from the stage. “Anyway, if you mind, sir, we’re gonna play a song about our grandparents and people who fought Nazis in the war and shit. So if you could just shut the fuck up for five minutes.”
Soon afterward, some online noted that the band’s X account had been deactivated and assumed — incorrectly — it was tied to Casey’s criticism of President Trump and his co-president, X commandant Elon Musk. Not so, Casey tells Rolling Stone.
“We broke up with him first. We quit Twitter in 2022 when he was only half a Nazi,” Casey says. “Then someone else took our handle, pretending to be our official account, so we filed a legal complaint to put a stop to that — which is why @dropkickmurphys shows as suspended.”
But Casey, never one to hold his tongue — in 2022, he ripped Trump as “the greatest swindler in the history of the world” during a gig in Allentown, Pennsylvania — speculated that if Dropkick Murphys hadn’t shut down their Twitter first, Musk surely would have.
“Look, we pulled our account because we didn’t want to be part of that guy’s empire,” he says. “But if we were still on there, I’m sure he would have suspended us by now.”
In 2022, Casey talked to Rolling Stone in depth about the Allentown outburst, which he said was prompted by pro-Trump merch being peddled at the fair near the concert stage. “I felt like we were playing a MAGA flea market,” Casey said. “Every other table was selling the MAGA gear and the ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ gear and all this stuff. I was a little overwhelmed and befuddled. It was like I was dropped into another planet.”
As RS wrote then, Casey reached his breaking point when he was approached by a guy who claimed to be a Dropkick Murphys fan wearing a T-shirt with what Casey calls a “pro-QAnon slash insurrection” slogan on the front.
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“I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I ain’t taking a fucking picture with you with that shirt on,’” Casey said.
Dropkick Murphys wrapped up their annual St. Patrick’s Day residency last night at the Citizens House of Blues in Boston with a set that included fan favorites like “The State of Massachusetts,” “Rose Tattoo,” and their signature, “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.”
