Bruce Springsteen Shredded By Hometown Paper for Anti-Trump Concert: ‘Hypocritical Crap. Profiteering over Legitimate Protest’

Bobby Olivier, a food and culture Editor and a music reporter for NJ Advance Media, took Bruce Springsteen to task this week calling the rocker’s Prudential Center concert in Newark on Monday “all hypocritical crap. Profiteering over legitimate protest.”

“Springsteen’s artistic identity, as a bleeding-heart populist who sings for the destitute and downtrodden, has never been more disconnected from his economic behavior as a touring act or businessman. The blue-collar troubadour now charges exorbitant amounts for his tickets — up to $2,900 retail for the best seats in Newark Monday; prices he agreed to despite fan backlash,” Olivier writes at NJ.com.

“He’s selling ‘No Kings’ branded flags for $90 in the arena concourse,” Olivier says of Springsteen. “And last week, his merchandise distributor got an injunction passed to ban bootleg T-shirt sales outside the venue, even as crews of independent sellers — fine examples of working-class people he’s romanticized for 50 years — hawk merch at nearly every other Prudential Center show without issue.”

Springsteen brought his anti-Trump tirades to new heights in February when he announced his “Land of Hope and Dreams’ American tour,” which has seen the New Jersey native go on the attack against President Trump from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Los Angeles, California, to Newark, New Jersey.

Fans lucky or wealthy enough to score the pricey Springsteen tickets have been beaten over the head with the same screed from Springsteen at every show: “The America I’ve wrote about for 50 years, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration.”

Springsteen’s act, it seems, is starting to wear out its welcome.

“The unrecognizable reality of the 2026 Springsteen experience, coupled with this tour’s political framing — an exploitation of American division and outrage in a manner no better than any cable news pundit — is a damning contradiction, a lapse in logic,” Olivier writes at NJ.com. “It threatens to tarnish the final act of Bruce’s career and is no small tragedy for New Jersey’s greatest rock star.”

Earlier this month, President Trump hit back at the E Street Band frontman. Calling Springsteen “a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon,” Trump said his supporters should boycott Springsteen’s shows.