While Donald Trump celebrated the 4th of July at the White House by signing his controversial “big, beautiful” bill, Green Day were a world away in Belgium marking the nation’s independence day in their signature agit-punk manner. Singer Billie Joe Armstrong, who has made his long made his harsh feelings about the president crystal clear from the stage, did it again on Friday during GD’s headlining set at the Rock Werchter festival when he led the crowd in an anti-Trump chant to mark the nation’s 249th birthday.
“F– Donald Trump,” Armstrong encouraged the audience to chant in the middle of a performance of “Holiday,” the latest in the singer’s repeated broadsides against the American president. As has become customary, Armstrong also once again tweaked the lyrics to the band’s signature political bombtrack, “American Idiot,” shouting “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda.”
In a seeming nod to Jimi Hendrix’s legendarily incendiary performance of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969, Armstrong played a touchingly gentle bit of the National Anthem, singing high and sweet about the “dawn’s early light” while plucking out the melody on an electric guitar. The bit ended with a woman in the crowd shouting “F–k Donald Trump!” as the lyrics faded from “at the twilight’s last gleaming” into the American Idiot ballad “What Me Up When September Ends.”
Last month, Armstrong celebrated Green Day’s debut appearance at the Download Festival in the U.K. with another broadside against the administration. “Donald Trump in his administration is a fascist government,” Armstrong told the crowd a day before Trump presided over his long-awaited D.C military parade. “And it’s up to us to fight back.” Armstrong also got the Download audience to join him in calling Trump a “fat bastard.”
Though “American Idiot” was originally written in response to the George W. Bush administration, Armstrong has been swapping the “redneck agenda” line out to slam the “MAGA agenda” — and occasionally former DOGE boss Elon Musk’s “Elon Agenda” — during recent Green Day shows.
