Green Day is working politics into their performances yet again, this time taking aim at Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Photos from the pop punk band’s set taken during their current tour circulated on social media recently, showing them playing music in front of a giant banner that read, simply, “F—k Ted Cruz.”
The band hasn’t commented on the images, but lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong did repost a fan’s picture of the stage to his Instagram stories earlier this month.
Considering the timing of the sentiment, it’s likely that this particular anti-Ted Cruz message comes as a response to the Republican’s continued allegiance to the National Rifle Association and his abysmal stance on gun control in the wake of the Uvalde elementary school shooting that left so many children dead.
“Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer the entire Uvalde community during this devastating time and we mourn the lives that were taken by this act of evil,” Cruz said, mere days before speaking at an NRA conference in Houston. He also scolded both a UK reporter and a Texas activist on separate occasions for confronting him about lax gun control laws, and called for more cops in schools — despite Uvalde police bungling their handling of the shooting on multiple counts.
Cruz has long been a controversial, and largely despised, conservative figure, so Green Day’s message is apparently resonating around the world.
Green Day isn’t slated to play another show in Texas until late October, but one can hope they’ll still be rocking this banner when they get there. The sentiment will certainly, unfortunately, still be relevant.
