Keith Morris has been howling about injustice, greed and rage for half a century. The legendary lead singer of such hardcore punk bands as Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Off! has never been known to soft-pedal his feelings, and on Sunday night (May 24) during a show at the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas the dreadlocked punk icon had no time for an audience member who called him a “traitor.”

According to video of the incident, after the unidentified fan called Morris, 70, a turncoat — seemingly because he refused to sign Circle Jerks merch mid-set and had gone off on Republican politicians earlier in the show — the singer laid into the aggrieved concertgoer with no mercy.

“I’m a traitor? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. F–k you,” Morris said. “I vote in every election and I always vote for the least stinkiest piece of s–t. So, you’re not here for my political bulls–t, you’re here for the music. Do you f–king understand our f–king lyrics? Do you understand what we’re singing about?”

He then made his feelings about MAGA figurehead Donald Trump very clear. “Do you f–king understand here that I think that I think f–king Donald Trump is the biggest piece of s–t that ever walked upon the f–king earth?,” Morris said of the president who is currently polling at his lowest point to date in his second term — with some polls ranking his approval even lower than after the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by his supporters — thanks to a sour economy and a messy war of choice in Iran that has caused gas prices to soar around the world. “Are you f–king Nazis? Are you f–king fascists? Well here’s the deal, gentlemen. You guys, First: I’m not signing your record. Second off, the next time we come to town, stay the f–k home. It’s really simple.”

According to video of the incident, about 11 minutes into the show, and before his longer anti-RNC rant, Morris addressed the audience and explained where the band was coming from. “Some of our subject material includes some violence. We’re not violent people, but we live in such sh–ty times,” he said. “It’s real easy to to run out and purchase a gun and want to shoot somebody. Now, of course, we wouldn’t do that. What we would do, is we’d just rent a tractor and just f–king jam down the sidewalk. Just get back in that shop, get in your car, get off the f–king sidewalk. Anyways, we live in incredibly horrible times right now. I’m going to be 71 in 4 months.”

He went on to denigrate the state of our modern politics, homing in on Republicans in general. “In all of my time on the planet Earth, living on the continent of North America, I’ve never seen such a motherf–king s–t show of such … It’s a f–king s–t barge of f–king politicians,” he said. “They’re the f–king worst. And even you Republicans that think your guys, your people, are doing all of these great things for you, they only want to f–k you in the a–. And I do believe their motto is, ‘the younger the better.’”

The latter comment was met with some shouts of “f– yeah!” from the crowd as the band leapt into their 1983 Golden Shower of Hits song “When the Shit Hits the Fan,” on which he howls, “In a sluggish economy/ Inflation, recession/ Hits the land of the free/ Standing in unemployment lines/ Blame the government/ For hard times.”

After a fight broke out mid-set in the audience, stopping the show for several minutes, Morris doubled-down. “We are all citizens of the United States,” he said. “That does not mean we’ve got to align ourselves with those motherf–king dips-its. None of them!”

The band then launched into the blistering, “Coup d’état” from the 1984 Repo Man soundtrack, which describes a violent assault on government. “Coup d’état/ The government gets overthrown/ A sudden force, a major blow, over out, the new comes in … A push from the left and a shove from the right/ It’s all planned up, we’ll do it tonight/ First the president, then his wife/ We’ll have ’em for a ransom or take their lives.”

After a series of European shows this summer, the Circle Jerks will come back to the U.S. for the 2026 CBGB Festival featuring Patti Smith, Morrissey, Interpol, Violet Grohl and the Sex Pistols.

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