Rumors About Bruce Springsteen That Have Spread Since His Trump Feud Began

Bruce Springsteen is one of the world's most famous musicians and has been an outspoken political activist for decades. He's also been engaged in a long-standing dramatic feud with President Donald Trump. Springsteen has been critical of Trump ever since he first took office in 2016 and has endorsed everyone who has run against Trump. He has routinely used his platform and fame to slam the divisive politician, and Trump has responded in kind with the kind of immaturity and pettiness people have come to expect from the outspoken thin-skinned tycoon.

While Springsteen has a legion of devoted fans, he's also become the target of vitriolic disdain and fake news stories, spread largely by MAGA supporters who have taken issue with his anti-Trump stance. The prevalence of rumors about Springsteen reached new heights, however, in May 2025, after the singer spoke out against the president during a concert in Manchester, England. Springsteen said (via CBS News) that America is "currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration."

Trump then jumped on his Truth Social page to share one of his trademark rambling social media meltdowns. "I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics," Trump wrote, playing fast and loose with his choice of capitalization, as usual. "This dried out 'prune' of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the country." After the feud escalated, the wild rumors about Springsteen really began to spiral out of control.

Before and after Donald Trump's 2024 election victory, the cantankerous politician repeatedly slammed Bruce Springsteen as well as Taylor Swift in numerous posts on his Truth Social platform. Meanwhile, Springsteen has responded with some ego-shattering digs at Trump in return. However, the president's remarkably petty comments about both artists lent a level of believability to a Facebook message posted by a page called Rock & Roll Universe in May 2025, which claimed that Swift and Springsteen had performed together as a show of solidarity and defiance against Trump.

"When Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift took the stage together, it wasn't just a duet—it was a statement," The post read, alongside photos allegedly taken at their joint concert. "As the two icons stood shoulder to shoulder, the arena erupted in thunderous applause, drowning out the noise of viral criticism that had trailed them online." The only problem is, this entire story is actively fictional.

As Snopes pointed out in their debunking of the claims, the photos in the post are from completely different events. The image of Swift was snapped at her Buenos Aires concert in November 2023, while the pics of Springsteen are from two different shows in 2022 and 2023. Additionally, it's likely that a joint performance by two of the music industry's biggest and most beloved artists would make the mainstream news, and people wouldn't first be hearing about it from a Facebook account overflowing with AI generated content and fully fabricated nonsense.

In May 2025, Pam Bondi started getting heat for something other than dressing up in what looks like an antique tablecloth and instead became the focus of yet another rumor that has been hard to escape. Specifically, a screenshot began circulating, allegedly taken from a Fox News broadcast of Bondi at a press briefing, that claimed the United States Attorney General said that Bruce Springsteen was breaking the law with his "The Boss" nickname. "It's illegal to call yourself 'The Boss' if you're not in charge of the entire country," Bondi is quoted as saying, according to the doctored screenshot. The image was originally shared on Facebook by someone who captioned the post, "They're gonna deport Bruce Springsteen aren't they?"

The image went viral and began getting shared by both liberal and conservative meme pages across social media. People without any ability to google or use logical reasoning took the post at face value. However, the quote from Bondi was invented wholesale as a bit of satire by Schlarmann, who never intended for it to be taken seriously. After the image took off and comments on his post began to blow up, Schlarmann commented on the post, writing, "I write jokes guys please remember to temper your outrage with that." However, for anyone who saw the post reshared without the Facebook poster's added context, it's likely Bondi's fake quote will be remembered as fact alongside the real, baffling, and problematic things she's actually said during her time in Donald Trump's administration.

Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen are two legendary musicians that everyone's dad seems to love. They have also been outspoken critics of Donald Trump. Yet somehow a fake news story went viral in May 2025, which claimed that Joel had cancelled some upcoming concerts with Springsteen because of The Boss' verbal jabs at the president. The story was first circulated on Facebook and claimed that Joel had declared, "Music and politics don't mix."

The original post was met with a slew of right-wing Facebook users who praised Joel for his stance, while slamming Springsteen for voicing his political opinion. Some users criticized the "Dancing in the Dark" singer for getting into politics at all (while ironically expressing their love for Kid Rock for doing the same thing). Joel, however, has waded into politics before and shared his dislike for Trump in the past. Speaking with Rolling Stone in May 2019, Joel said of Trump, "I see him as being from an entirely different planet ... I'm not a big fan of his, so to be fair I don't have a lot of insight into him."

In that same interview, Joel actually praised Springsteen for being so politically active. "I admire people like Springsteen, who gets up there and touts a candidate. He's a citizen and he has a right to do that." Which is just one indication that the story was entirely fictional. The Facebook page that shared the made-up post calls itself America's Last Line Of Defense and states that their posts are satirical. However, it seems the page toes the line between satire and inflammatory fake news meant simply to incite anger and bank on outrage for clicks.

Another rumor about the rocker popped up in May 2025. It claimed that Bruce Springsteen had lost a lucrative advertising contract with Jeep because of his remarks about the president. The post, first shared on Facebook before spreading to numerous other social media platforms, quoted the car company in a fake statement that read, "The Jeep name stands for American unity, not divisiveness. It's time for Bruce to move on." The post further asserted that the loss of the commercial gig would cost the singer $12 million per year.

In reality, almost nothing about this post was true, except for the fact that Springsteen had done one Jeep commercial back in 2021, which was created to run during the Super Bowl. The commercial itself promoted unity, compassion, and finding a middle ground that would welcome everyone. Beyond this one commercial — which proved controversial with both staunch liberals and conservatives for its message about coming together at a middle ground — Springsteen hasn't been in a Jeep commercial since, and it's not because of his political leanings.

If anything, he seemingly lost his chance at another Jeep payday due to some legal troubles. Just days after the Super Bowl commercial aired in February 2021, TMZ reported that Springsteen had been arrested for a DWI in New Jersey the previous November but had managed to keep the incident under the radar. Subsequently, Jeep pulled the ad from the air and all of its social media channels. Meanwhile, the fake story about Jeep dropping Springsteen over his Trump comments was once again fabricated by the "satirists" at America's Last Line Of Defense, who also invented the story about Springsteen's feud with Billy Joel.

Just a few days after Donald Trump's 2024 election victory, an article began to circulate claiming that Bruce Springsteen — as well as fellow Trump critic Robert De Niro – were going to be leaving the U.S. before Trump was set to take office once again. According to the article, which was shared by the Facebook group The Patriots Network in a since-deleted post, Springsteen and De Niro allegedly held a joint press conference in which they declared their decisions to leave America. The article speculated that the men would be moving to Italy, and suggested that they would be collaborating on a documentary called "The Land We Left Behind."

While this post was reshared, liked, and commented on by thousands of people, it is entirely untrue. The Patriots Network and the website where the article appeared, SpaceXMania.com, both labeled it as "satire" and both feature disclaimers explaining that everything they post is fictional and should not be taken seriously. That did not, however, stop many people from taking it entirely at face value.

In reality, however, Springsteen has joked in the past that he has thought about moving out of the country because of Trump. In October 2020, while speaking with reporters in Australia, Springsteen joked that if Trump beat Biden for re-election, he would relocate Downunder. "I love Australia. Every time, we have nothing but good times down there," Springsteen said (via Newsweek). "If Trump is re-elected ... I'll see you on the next plane." Trump wound up losing that election, but came out victorious against Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, and Springsteen did not make any public comments about moving out of the country during that election cycle.