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Bruce Springsteen has been forced to "beef up" security measures on his current Land of Hope and Dreams tour with The E Street Band due to death threats from those opposed to his scathing critiques of US government policy under Donald Trump.
Springsteen has long been critical of America's 45th and 47th President. In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, the New Jersey-born singer-songwriter said of Trump, "He doesn't understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American."
His condemnation of the US President have only intensified since then.
On March 31, at the opening night of his Land of Hope and Dreams tour at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Springsteen told the audience:
"The America that I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that's been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.
"Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over war."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the current state of US politics, Springsteen's words have angered some on the right of the political divide, with some individuals going as far as to level death threats at the singer, according to E Street Band guitarist Stevie Van Zandt.
"This tour has been a little bit different because of the high security," Van Zandt tells The Daily Mail. "It's a very specific political theme to this tour and there's been a lot of threats, death threats. Usually there's always some, but this time it's been increasing."
Revealing that Springsteen has had to "beef up security", Van Zandt added, "it's mostly just talk. And it's not like we're saying something that's not true or we're saying something that's so really particularly controversial, but it's specifically political."
"So the FBI and others have been really watching things and been overly concerned about it, as they should be," he continued. "We want the fans to be safe and feel safe. So we really go the extra mile with extra security for that reason alone."
The current American leg of the Land Of Hope and Dreams tour will wrap in Philadelphia on May 30.
