Green Day condemns Trump onstage

GREEN Day led a furious chant against President-elect Donald Trump at the American Music Awards.

On a stage full of pyrotechnics, Green Day turned the punk rockers’ recent song Bang Bang into an anti-Trump anthem at the awards ceremony broadcast live on US television yesterday.

“No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong shouted repeatedly to smiles from the star-studded audience in Los Angeles.

Green Day, who led a revival of punk rock in the early 1990s, repeatedly denounced Trump during the election campaign, in which the Republican ran on staunch criticism of immigrants.

Trump tweeted in 2010 that he had seen Green Day’s Broadway musical American Idiot with his wife Melania and found it “excellent”.

John Legend and Lady Gaga, two US artistes outspoken in their denunciations of Trump, steered clear of politics as they performed new singles.

But award co-hosts Jay Pharoah – a comedian from Saturday Night Live, the television comedy show that has upset Trump – and model Gigi Hadid made multiple cracks on the president-elect.

Pharoah said Trump must have enjoyed performer Bruno Mars, the Hawaiian-born star whose heritage includes Puerto Rican and Filipino roots.

“‘I love Bruno Mars. I don’t know what colour he is, so I can’t deport him,’” Pharoah said, imitating Trump’s booming voice. — AFP