Billie Joe Armstrong, the bisexual frontman of the rock band Green Day, called Vice President J.D. Vance a “r**ard” during a recent performance to a crowd of 60,000 fans in Melbourne, Australia, causing right-wing calls for a boycott. It’s not the first time Armstrong has used his music and platform to criticize the administration of President Donald Trump.

While singing the band’s 2004 song “Jesus of Suburbia,” Armstrong replaced the lyric “am I ret**ded, or am I just overjoyed?” with “am I ret**ded or am I just J.D. Vance?” The Daily Dot noted. A concert-goer captured the lyrical change in a video posted to social media.

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Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says it’s “f**king cool” to be a bisexual icon
He called out the erasure that comes with being bi and married to the same woman for 29 years.

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At another point in the concert, Armstrong asked the audience, “Don’t you want Elon Musk to shut the f**k up? Don’t you want Donald Trump to shut the f**k up?” Video of his remark also appeared on social media, with conservative commenters on both videos calling to boycott the band.

However, Armstrong has long expressed anti-Trump sentiment.

During Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign, Armstrong began changing the lyrics of the band’s 2004 song “American Idiot” from “the subliminal, mind-f**k America” to “the subliminal mind-Trump America.” In 2019, changed the lyric, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.” In one South African performance of the song, Armstrong sang, “I’m not a part of the Elon agenda,” a reference to Trump‘s neo-Nazi henchman, transphobic billionaire Elon Musk. Armstrong has also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Armstrong inspired an internet meltdown last August when, during a performance, he held up a mask of Trump with the word “idiot” scrawled across its forehead. MAGA supporters claimed that it was a “severed head” and claimed that Armstrong had threatened violence against Trump just a month after an assassination attempt on Trump’s life.

Some people have questioned Armstrong’s bisexuality since he has been married to his wife Adrienne for 29 years, and they have two adult sons: Joey and Jakob. Numerous bisexuals in different-sex relationships have faced similar erasure.

“Sexuality is always so much more than what the standard, nuclear-family type of way of looking at things,” Armstrong added. “But I have been married — there’s this other side of me that’s very conventional when it comes to my 30-year marriage to my wife. But I just look at sexuality: It’s not one way or the other. And if anybody ever tries to say that, I don’t think they’re really being honest with themselves.”

Armstrong has also recently emerged as a transgender ally, calling the current moral panic over transgender young people “f**king close-minded.”

 “It’s like people are afraid of their children. Why would you be afraid? Why don’t you let your kid just be the kid that they are?” the singer said of trans youth.

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