When I was a teenager in upstate New York, quiet, brown and trying to pretend I understood sports, Bruce Springsteen didn’t just play music.
He decoded America. He made me feel like this whole country was an inside joke I could finally laugh at. Not because I belonged to it yet, but because I wanted to. Because the people in his songs felt like they were going nowhere and everywhere all at once.
So, when President Donald Trump rage-tweeted at Bruce, calling him “overrated” and a “dried-out prune,” what he really was doing was telling us he’s never sat alone in a parked car, listening to “Racing in the Street,” trying to figure out who he is. He’s never driven through a town with more dollar stores than dreams. He’s broadcasting that he doesn’t get Springsteen. And that’s why he’ll never get America.
Because Bruce is the kind of myth one earns. Trump is the kind one buys. The Boss certainly doesn’t need defending, but I feel like I owe it to him as a fan to take down Trump with five of my favorite Springsteen tracks. Let’s rock ’n’ roll.
The Tracks
To literally play long, here’s a link to a Spotify playlist: bit.ly/bruce-v-trump.
1. ‘Thunder Road’
This isn’t just a love song; it’s a promise that the road leads somewhere, even if the map is inked in desperation.
Springsteen sings, “It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win.” He rolls down the windows and says, “It’s not too late.” Trump rolls up the windows, locks the doors and screams at a kid delivering tacos.
Verdict: Bruce offers escape. Trump offers exile.
2. ‘Born in the U.S.A.’
This song isn’t patriotic — it’s post-patriotic. Springsteen howls for the soldier who came home to nothing. Trump hugs a flag made in China like it owes him rent. It’s not protest; it’s prophecy. And Bruce saw what was coming long before January 6 got merchandised.
Verdict: Bruce channels Whitman’s America. Trump xeroxes P.T. Barnum’s.
3. ‘Atlantic City’
Bruce whispered stories of small-time dreamers and big-time debts. Trump couldn’t even find the boardwalk, stiffed every contractor in sight and left town just before the subpoenas hit.
Verdict: Bruce eulogizes America. Trump foreclosed on it.
4. ‘The Rising’
A ladder reaching into smoke. Voices singing through grief. In 2002, Bruce gave us the only honest hymn in a year full of plastic flags and jingo jingles.
Trump? He saw 9/11 as a real estate opportunity. Literally.
Springsteen sings, “Come on up for the rising.” Trump says, “I now have the tallest building.” One mourns. The other gloats.
Verdict: Bruce lit a candle. Trump lit a fuse.
5. ‘Born to Run’
This is the song for me—it’s a mythic freeway gospel for losers with nothing left but each other. Bruce gives one the key to the car, the open road and the belief that freedom still exists between toll booths and broken dreams.
Trump, meanwhile, was never born to run. He was born to inherit, to sit, to demand someone else take the wheel. If Bruce is racing into the unknown with hope in his voice, Trump is idling in a golf cart, rage-tweeting at the sunset, demanding to know why McDonald’s is late.
Verdict: “Tramps like us” is a love letter to the forgotten. Trump has never been anything like us. Bruce is movement, risk, desire. Trump is stagnation, entitlement, revenge. He’d sell out Clarence Clemons for a burger and another Saudi real estate deal.
FINAL SCORE: Bruce 5, Trump 0
Bruce is the echo in the jukebox, the ghost on the highway, the last guy in the bar still listening. America deserves someone who was born to run, not run it into the ground.
Beautiful.
Thank you!