The recent tiff between Donald Trump and Bruce Springsteen inspired me to go out and buy Springsteen’s latest album, “Western Stars.”

On the cover of the lyrics leaflet is a photo of The Boss holding what he should never be allowed to touch: An acoustic guitar.

Springsteen has written some great rock songs to the accompaniment of electric guitars. These songs are populated by characters doing what people do at the Jersey Shore: Have fun.

But stick an acoustic guitar in his hands and a wave of misery envelops him and his characters.

As I cruised around the Shore the other day, I put the disc into my CD player.

Sure enough, the characters in these songs include a down-on-his-luck Hollywood actor, a down-on-his-luck stunt man and a down-on his luck hitchhiker.

That song begins the album. To an acoustic accompaniment, Bruce launches into this lyric:

“Thumb stuck out as I go.

“I’m just travelin’ up the road.”

My immediate reaction was: Did your bike break down again, Bruce?

The Boss made the news on Nov. 11, 2016, when the motorcycle he was riding broke down near one of my favorite spots, Allaire State Park. Some bikers came along and gave him a ride to a local bar.

I have no idea what they discussed there. But if it was the election a few days earlier in which Donald Trump won the presidency, The Boss would have been wise to keep his thoughts to himself.

Trump’s a popular guy in my neck of the woods.

In fact, Trump is a popular guy with just about all the working-class characters Springsteen likes to write about.

That’s why I have always implored my fellow denizen of the Jersey Shore to restrict his comments to rock music and skip politics.

Does he listen to me? Nope. In a Rolling Stone interview two months before the 2016 election, The Boss said of The Donald: “Well, you know, the republic is under siege by a moron, basically.”

Now he’s upset that the president recently took a shot at him that was rather mild – at least by Jersey standards.

At a recent rally in Minneapolis, Trump recalled how he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016: “I didn’t need Beyoncé and Jay-Z. I didn’t need little Bruce Springsteen. They had all these people, they'd come in because she couldn't get a crowd.”

That wasn’t hyperbole. I covered the Clinton rally in Philadelphia on Election Eve that year at which Bruce and Jon Bon Jovi appeared. Here’s what I wrote afterward:

“When I saw Trump over the summer at nearby West Chester University, he generated giant crowds just by showing up. Hillary Clinton needed rock stars.”

As it turned out, even the rock stars weren’t enough. Clinton lost Pennsylvania precisely because she failed to appeal to the sort of blue-collar voters Springsteen claims to represent in such songs as “My Hometown.”

In that ballad about growing up in Freehold, Springsteen wrote of a factory boss who tells workers, “These jobs are going, boys – and they ain’t coming back.”

That sounds a lot like what Clinton told a West Virginia crowd that year: “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?”

Wrong. Clinton went on to get an abysmal 26 percent of the vote in West Virginia that year.

The Boss seemed blissfully unaware of this contradiction at the time.

So what’s his beef with the president these days?

When asked on a morning talk show about Trump’s recent jab at him, The Boss responded, "The stewardship of the nation is — has been thrown away to somebody who doesn't have a clue as to what that means.”

I don’t have a clue what that means either. It’s just boilerplate political rhetoric.

Springsteen added, “And unfortunately, we have somebody who I feel doesn't have a grasp of the deep meaning of what it means to be an American."

There are a lot of legitimate knocks on Trump. But a guy from the outer boroughs who makes it to the top of the Manhattan real-estate game and then parlays it into the presidency is a walking example of the deep meaning of what it means to be an American.

Springsteen of all people should understand that. He’s had the same sort of improbable rise to success.

It’s a free country. He can say what he wants about Trump.

But here’s the cold truth: If Trump did to the country what the Boss does to the characters in his songs, he’d lose all 50 states next year.

My advice to the Boss is: Get ready to play at a lot of campaign rallies next year.

And leave the acoustic guitar home.

PLUS - ONE THING BRUCE GOT RIGHT IN 2016:

Upon reading that 2016 Rolling Stone interview with Springsteen, I came upon this quote from him: “When you start talking about elections being rigged, you’re pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it’s a very, very dangerous thing to do.”

It certainly is. But that’s exactly what the Democrats began doing the moment they lost the 2016 election.

So Bruce got that right - but I doubt he’d admit it today.

: