While a lot of country music fans were floored when superstar Jelly Roll attacked President Donald Trump while hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, with many folks assuming he was on board with MAGA, another big name in the industry who supports Trump said the jokes against the president weren’t all that “surprising.”
John Rich, who was sworn into the Trump administration last month as its “Special Envoy for American Landowners,” stated that Jelly should be ready to lose his MAGA listeners after essentially coming out against the president. During a monologue, Jelly Roll insulted Trump’s weight and insinuated that Americans were ready for his second term to come to an end.
“The Jelly Roll situation is interesting to me because he presented himself, and I’ve been around him a long time, presented his story—had a horrible past, was incarcerated for a long time, turned his life around, came out into country music, really was a testimonial to second chances in America,” Rich went on to say during an interview on The Benny Show.
“That America gave him the opportunity to turn his life around—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And a Republican governor in Tennessee pardoned him,” Rich continued, according to The Daily Beast. “And then, of course, he was complimentary about the president.” During the late-night show, Jelly Roll took a shot at Trump’s approval rating.
“A lot of doctors are worried about the president’s weight. After his last physical, we found out Trump gained 14 pounds, which means he is now tipping the scales at almost 240. That’s crazy. Think about this, y’all, in the few last years I’ve lost 300 pounds. That means I’ve lost an entire Donald Trump. And let’s be honest, based on his approval ratings, it seems like most of the country wants to do the same thing,” Jelly said.
After getting kicked around in the comments section on social media platforms, Jelly Roll addressed the backlash on his final night hosting the program, where he shed a few tears. “I spent my entire career trying not to belong to a political party—partly because until March of this year, I wasn’t even allowed to vote,” he said, because of his past felony convictions. “But now that I have that right, it’s one I plan to exercise this coming November,” Jelly explained.
Many fans speculated that the jokes were created by Kimmel’s anti-Trump writers, but Jelly Roll says that’s not the case. “A lot of people seem to think these Jimmy Kimmel writers have secretly been pulling the strings and forcing this good old country boy to poke fun at our commander-in-chief,” he went on to say in the monologue.
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“But let’s be real about this, y’all. Do you think I would take orders from some sweaty little dork named Josh? No, I was just telling it like it is, and for some reason, that seemed to freak a lot of people out.” Rich stated during the interview that Jelly Roll was aware of the risks of revealing his stance on President Trump.
“When you come in and make statements like he did over the past week—he knows how this works,” Rich commented. “He knows who the audience is. And so I have to think he really believes every single word he said, or he wouldn’t have said it because when you make statements that are that hardcore and to a large extent counteractive to the presentation you’ve been making, you do understand in country music that half or more of your audience may disown you.”
“They may turn their back on you, they may stop listening to you, they may turn you off, but you make the statement anyway.” Rich, an avid supporter of Trump’s, compared the backlash thrown his direction when he came out in support for Trump. “I’ve done the exact same thing in my career. I have made statement after statement, things that I’m for, things that I’m against, knowing that the entire music industry is liberal. They’re all liberal.”
Rich then revealed that due to his open support for Trump he lost a record deal, radio play, and stopped receiving invitations to award shows. “All those things happened to me,” he explained, “And so Jelly Roll knew the same thing concerning his audience, yet he did it anyway. So to me what that says is this guy is really who he says he is.”
“I think what you’re seeing from the backlash is people didn’t know that’s who he really is and that that’s how he really thinks,” Rich said, concluding his comments on his colleague in the industry. “It’s not a crime or a sin to say what he said; it’s just a revealing thing. He should have been talking that way from the very beginning, and he probably wouldn’t have this problem.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video