Just weeks after the brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Bruce Springsteen visited the late-night program as a guest on Thursday, Oct. 2—and the “Born To Run” singer didn’t shy away from commenting on the recent controversy.
Though he was on Kimmel’s show to promote the new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the rock music icon was asked to give his take on the current state of the nation, specifically to share a “positive” and uplifting outlook with the crowd.
“You’ve spoken very beautifully, I think, about the state of this country and the world,” Kimmel, 57, said during the interview. “And I was wondering, before you wrap up here, if you had anything positive to share with us, to inspire us, because not too many people do.”
Springsteen, 76, then joked that Kimmel was “Putting [him] on the spot,” but that didn’t stop him from eloquently expressing his feelings on the matter.
“50 years, I’ve been kind of a musical ambassador for America around the world,” Springsteen explained. “I have this song, ‘Land of Open Dreams,’ which is kind of a prayer to the country, and we play it every night to millions of people.”
“I know for a fact, that that’s how many people around the world still see our country,” he firmly stated, while the audience broke out into applause.
“Not as a land of fear, not as a land of divisiveness, not of government censorship, not of hatred,” he went on to say, while asserting, “I basically believe that that’s an America worth fighting for.”
Springsteen’s comments come in the wake of a tense political climate and growing public concern about censorship, particularly in the press.
A vocal critic of Donald Trump and his administration, Springsteen’s mention of “government censorship” seemed to be an indirect message about Kimmel off the air, a decision that is widely believed to have been influenced by pressure from the FCC.
Kimmel’s show was suspended “indefinitely” by Disney and ABC in mid-September due to comments the host made about the death of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk.
