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Third Eye Blind Frontman Confirms to CNN He Is Acceptably Progressive, Aging Rocker

July 21, 2016

Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins bashed Republicans again during a strange CNN interview Thursday that seemed to serve no purpose other than to remind Americans that most aging rock band members are dutiful progressives.

As the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday, Third Eye Blind sabotaged its own charity concert Tuesday to lambast its Republican fans as bigots, curse at the crowd, and play a series of new songs that no one liked.

Jenkins, sometimes gesticulating wildly, seemed bothered that the Republican Party platform did not more closely resemble the Democratic Party platform.

CNN host Brooke Baldwin played a clip of Jenkins getting booed and retorting he was "the motherf***ing artist up here," before explaining the origins of the band’s hit song, Jumper, and criticizing the GOP over LGBT issues.

Baldwin asked why it was so important for Jenkins to relay his views to the crowd.

"Well, you left out the part where I said, ‘Raise your hand if you believe in science,’ and half the crowd booed," Jenkins said.

"Really," Baldwin said, not pushing back on his claim. She also did not seem to take into account that the concert-goers were likely annoyed they were receiving a political lecture instead of listening to music.

"The two things that I said were both, um, one was a question and the other one was a fact, and the fact that I stated was that LGBT Americans are not still enfranchised in the RNC platform, and because I’m an artist and not a song-and-dance man, I have to be playing in an environment that like makes sense, so I think I didn’t want to get painted by the RNC brush, and that’s why I brought it up," Jenkins said.

Jenkins said "what blows my mind" is how the focus was on the "back-and-forth," before going into a word gumbo of progressive platform issues.

"It’s really hard to get down to the policy that’s underneath it, and what I was talking about was the policy that they still have conversion therapy, they still have wanting to, like, amend the Constitution on marriage, and that’s in the convention without one single mention of global climate change," he said. "And in this entire event, there hasn’t been one mention of climate change, and the only thing that’s actually in it that has to do with science is repealing the EPA. These are actual, like, underlying policy bits."

"And I think what’s going on in this thing is maybe this is like an act of evil genius, where, if they just keep it chaotic enough, no one will focus on the fact that there’s either no policy or there’s really bad policy like, things like, like let’s not support our NATO allies. That was the news the other day," he added.

Baldwin finally broke in to insist CNN had covered Trump’s recent remarks about having conditions for supporting NATO allies. She did not correct him that Trump’s remarks were not the same as the Republican platform.

Jenkins also revealed that a Republican in the crowd passed her a note, with "amazing penmanship," thanking him for his mid-concert lecture. He also said most of the band’s crew supported Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), adding they all loved the one Trump supporter on the crew.

Third Eye Blind was the latest band to signal how serious and progressive it is by throwing a tantrum over Republicans. The Dropkick Murphys told Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "we literally hate you" when he used one of their songs last year, and Sarah Palin and former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) also took heat from Tom Petty and Heart, respectively, for using their music at events.