Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sits with his wife Melania Trump. Photo / Getty
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sits with his wife Melania Trump. Photo / Getty
President Donald Trump loved seeing "American Idiot," the Green Day Broadway musical, on its opening night in 2010, calling it "an amazing theatrical experience!" on Twitter.
That night, he posed on the red carpet with his wife, Melania, wearing his signature long red tie, and even managed to sit inthe theatre under the same roof as Rosie O'Donnell "without incident," Playbill reported at the time.
Musicians Mike Dirnt, Billie Joe Armstrong and Tre Cool attend the Broadway Opening of American Idiot at the Roseland Ballroom on April 20, 2010. Photo / Getty
But when Trump arrives in the United Kingdom this week for meetings with Prime Minister Theresa May and the queen, among others, the president may have a different view of the Green Day anti-establishment anthem.
Ahead of Trump's visit, protesters in the United Kingdom have launched a campaign to play "American Idiot" so many times that, by the time he arrives, the song will be the No. 1 single in the U.K. The incessant downloads started July 6 and will continue through Thursday. Protesters have been using iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube, among others, to stream and download the song.
The campaign's official motto: "Make American Idiot Great Again."
The plan, so far, appears to be working. On Amazon in the U.K., "American Idiot" is currently the best-selling song.
"Us in the UK have a good record of protesting in this way," the campaign's founders, Keith Curle and Geoff Thomas, told The Washington Post. "We are the country who put Sex Pistols and Rage Against the Machine at No. 1 in the past."
Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong wrote "American Idiot" in the throes of the Iraq War and the angst of post-9/11 America, which the song described as "an alien nation where everything isn't meant to be okay."
The titular track on the band's 2004 rock opera resonated with a generation of eyeliner-wearing, anti-establishment punks while at the same time playing ad nauseam on car radios in American suburbia, spending six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 100.
Trump is mostly avoiding London throughout the duration of the trip, where the protests will be most concentrated, The Associated Press reported.
A giant blimp depicting Trump as a baby holding an iPhone is also expected to greet him in London, should he get close enough to the protests to see it.
