Before Donald Trump took to Truth Social to rage against Bruce Springsteen — calling him a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker” and threatening ominously that “we’ll all see how it goes for him” — another American president once tried to silence a politically outspoken rock star.
But Richard Nixon didn’t just tweet insults at John Lennon. He tried to deport him.
That 1970s-era culture war — now resurrected in a new doc, One to One: John & Yoko — echoes eerily in Trump’s latest feud with American music royalty. Lennon, a British citizen with a U.S. green card living in New York at the time, had aligned himself with the radical left and spoken out forcefully against the Vietnam War and Nixon’s re-election. The Nixon administration responded by weaponizing immigration law, trying to boot Lennon back to the UK over an old pot bust. It was a thin pretext, and everyone knew it.
FBI files were opened. Surveillance began. Lennon became a target. The former Beatle hit back the only way he knew how, through his music. “I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians,” he sang in “Gimme Some Truth,” the song that opens the second side of 1971’s Imagine. “No short-haired, yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dick is going to Mother Hubbard soft soap me.”
Finally, in 1975, after years of legal battles, a federal court shut down the case, calling it “selective deportation based on secret political grounds.” But the damage had already been done: Lennon’s activism had been effectively neutered. And five years later, at just 40, Lennon was gunned down by a deranged fan outside his home on New York’s upper west side.
Nearly fifty years later, Trump isn’t going after foreign-born singers — at least not yet — but his public attacks on domestic critics like Springsteen, Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey carry a familiar whiff of authoritarian payback. The latest dust-up began May 14, when Springsteen, performing in Manchester, England, told the crowd:
“The America I love… is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”
“There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there,” the Boss went on. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death.”
Within 48 hours, Trump fired back online, unloading on Springsteen’s music, his looks, his politics, his intelligence (“Dumb as a rock”) — and issuing a vague but chilling warning about “how it goes for him” once he returns to the U.S.
Soon after, Trump expanded the attack, accusing Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah, and Bono of accepting illegal campaign payments from Kamala Harris. “CANDIDATES AREN’T ALLOWED TO PAY FOR ENDORSEMENTS,” he screamed in all caps. “IT’S NOT LEGAL!”
There is, of course, no evidence of wrongdoing. According to Rolling Stone, Harris paid for services — town halls, rallies, performances — through the artists’ production companies, as required by campaign law. But facts never slowed Nixon, either.
Back in the early 1970s, Lennon’s name didn’t appear on Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List,” which included such liberal luminaries as Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Barbra Streisand. But he was treated like one. Trump, it seems, is reviving that playbook — only this time, he’s skipping the secret memos and going straight for the digital bullhorn.
Trump, who has famously poor taste in music (he thinks Kid Rock is the next Frank Sinatra), is now
treating some of the country’s greatest performers like enemies of the state. What comes next for them — Subpoenas? Canceled visas? IRS audits? — is anyone’s guess.
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