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Fact Check: Green Day Singer Held Up 'Severed Head' of Trump During Concert?
By Nikki Dobrin,
16 hours ago
Claim:
A photo shared online in late July 2024 showed Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong holding up a fake severed head of Donald Trump two weeks after the attempted assassination of the former president.
Billie Joe Armstrong did hold up a replica of Donald Trump's head during the band's Washington D.C. performance. However, the Green Day singer spontaneously pulled the mask from a concert-goer. The incident did not appear to be a planned part of the show. Instead, it was an impromptu interaction, not an intentional depiction of the "severed" head of Trump, as was claimed on social media.
On July 30, 2024, an X user posted a photo ( archived ) of Billie Joe Armstrong — the frontman and guitarist of Green Day — holding up a replica of Donald Trump's face while onstage during the band's concert in Washington, D.C., and claimed the mask represented the severed head of the former U.S. president.
The X user wrote: " Green Day had a concert here in DC last night. They decided it'd be a good idea to hold up a severed Trump head. Just TWO WEEKS after he was sh*t in the head. These people are SICK."
Nearly 16 million people had viewed the post as of this writing, while several other social media accounts also shared the image, referring to the " severed " or " decapitated " head of the Republican presidential nominee.
However, while the photo was real, there was no evidence Armstrong meant for the mask to represent the "severed" or "decapitated" head of the former U.S. president, as the social media posts stated. Therefore, we rated this claim "Miscaptioned."
Green Day played a concert on July 29, 2024, at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., as part of the band's The Saviors Tour . The show occurred 16 days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
During the performance, Armstrong held up a Trump mask with the word "Idiot" scrawled across the rubber forehead, likely referencing the band's 2004 single "American Idiot."
Snopes contacted Armstrong for clarification but he did not immediately respond.
Concert footage appeared to show the incident was not planned. During Green Day's rendition of "Jesus of Suburbia," the singer bent down, reached his hand into the crowd and spontaneously took the mask from a concert-goer before holding it aloft to cheers from the audience. Seconds later, Armstrong threw it back into the crowd.
Footage from a different angle further proved the item was a mask and the moment was a spontaneous interaction with the crowd.
Armstrong has been vocal about his views on Trump. Live videos from multiple performances showed him changing the lyrics to Green Day's song "American Idiot" from, " I'm not a part of a redneck agenda," to, " I'm not part of the MAGA agenda ," in reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
Likewise, during Green Day's performance of their single "Bang Bang" at the 2016 American Music Awards , Armstrong led the audience in chanting: "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA." Furthermore, in a 2020 interview with British music outlet Kerrang! , Armstrong said of Trump: "I think that he's the most divisive leader of a country since Adolf Hitler. It sounds melodramatic to say it, but living in America, it's just true."
Snopes has previously fact-checked the anti-Trump sentiments of other musicians, including Kyle Gass of Tenacious D , and the false claim Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus said they would leave the U.S. if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
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