Ken Casey, the lead singer of the Dropkick Murphys, went OFF on a MAGA hat waving audience member on March 16. It wasn’t his first foray into insulting his audience. Casey then went on the MeidasTouch podcast to further expound on his hatred for Donald Trump, a “rat and a coward”. I am sure every member of the Murphys has heard of Michael Jordan.

“Republicans buy sneakers, too”

Jordan meant it as a jest, but there is an undeniable truth to those words. You can sing about family and loyalty and love and impart all those things to your fans without insulting them. As a matter of fact, you actually destroy your message with your outrage.

Have you heard what happened? Let’s hit up Rolling Stone for the details:

The Dropkick Murphys spent the weekend leading into St. Patrick’s Day hosting three consecutive shows at MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park in Boston. And in true Irish fashion, the weekend concluded with frontman Ken Casey slamming an attendee who spent the duration of Sunday’s concert holding up the all-black MAGA hat popularized by Elon Musk, which Casey called the “true Nazi edition.”

“If you’re in a room full of people and you want to know who’s in a cult, how do you know who’s in a cult?” Casey asked. “They’ve been holding up a fucking hat the whole night to represent a president.” His Celtic smack cam was only just getting started. “This is America, there’s no kings here,” he told the man. “Anyway, if you mind, sir, we’re gonna play a song about our grandparents and people who fought Nazis in the war and shit. So if you could just shut the fuck up for five minutes.”

The audience guy was holding up what Casey called “the summer edition” white MAGA hat. Yeah, that was an asshole move on MAGA dude’s part. When you know the aging punks are “agin” you, don’t poke them. So bad job on his part.

On the other hand, the Dropkick Murphys have been cosplaying their grandparents’ accents and history since 1996. The heavily Irish Boston area was their playground and their audience ate up the shtick. But, the Murphys made their feelings clear. From September, 2022:

Ken Casey, the lead singer and bassist of punk band Dropkick Murphys, delivered a blistering takedown of MAGA “grifters and billionaires” during a concert performance in Pennsylvania. Casey said that these people “are being duped by the greatest swindler in the history of the world,” referring to former Republican President Donald Trump.

Trump’s “Big Lie” that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 general election galvanized the MAGA movement, eventually culminating in the January 6 insurrection, which took place when a mob of Trump’s supporters attacked the United States Capitol on the false premise the election had been stolen.

Then Ken Casey went on the MiedasTouch and tripled down. Here is a summary:

But were the Dropkick Murphys suspended from X because of the comments? No. According to The Patriot Ledger, the band broke up with X:

The Dropkick Murphys account has been suspended on X, formerly known as Twitter, but not because of a viral video of the band’s front man calling out a Trump supporter at a concert.

Dropkick Murphys’ frontman Ken Casey publicly called out an attendee waving a “Make America Great Again” hat in the audience during a St. Patrick’s Day show in Boston. Not long after, people start calling attention online to Dropkick Murphy’s account showing up as suspended on X, speculating the two events were related.

However, the St. Patrick’s Day call-out by the band is not why their X account has been suspended.

According to Pitchfork reporting, Casey said that they broke bad with Musk first, leaving Twitter in 2022 when the world’s richest man was starting to dip his toes in far-right politics.

“Then someone else took our handle, pretending to be our official account, so we filed a legal complaint to put a stop to that—which is why @dropkickmurphys shows as suspended,” Casey said in a statement to Pitchfork.

Casey later said that they pulled their X account because they didn’t want to be complicit in Musk’s power structure, adding that if they were still on X, the Tesla CEO would have likely suspended them already.

What a fecking eejit! A better band is Flogging Molly. Enjoy Drunken Lullabies:

Slainte! Buh-bye Dropkick Murphys.

Featured Image: Sven Mandel/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Creative Commons 4.0