Country singer Jelly Roll is backtracking and tearing up after facing harsh backlash for telling fans to stop listening to his music after his hateful jokes about President Donald Trump and MAGA voters resulted in a avalanche of criticism.
The singer, whose real name is Jason Bradley DeFord, spent the entire week attacking conservatives, Republicans, and President Trump in his monologue during his stint as guest host for the ABC late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. And while his vulgar insults seemed to fly directly in the face of his fan base of Christian music fans, he was hit particularly hard by a backlash after he told those same fans he didn’t want them to follow him any more if they oppose his late-night jokes.
But for his last show, the “Son of a Sinner” singer backed away from his previous Trump Derangement Syndrome-induced invective, claiming it was all just for fun, and pleading with everyone to see him as a “moderate” or a centrist, despite the vitriol he disgorged all week. And he even teared up over it all before the show went to commercials.
The singer told the audience that he certainly didn’t agree to host the vacationing Kimmel’s show for a paycheck because, “I’m fucking rich, y’all!” He went on to point out that he really enjoyed the big UFC 250 fights that Trump sponsored at the White House this year.
But then he added, “But just because I watched a fight on TV doesn’t mean I support everything this administration does. Just like how hosting Jimmy Kimmel’s show doesn’t mean I have all of Jimmy Kimmel’s politics. Sure, I lean left on some things. But like most folks, I’m pretty down the middle. I am a Christian. I am a country music singer. I’m a farmer. I’m a bow hunter. And most of the things I eat I prefer to get with a stick and a string. That’s the truth.”
Then he said that he thoroughly enjoyed working with Kimmel’s staff, who he called the “kindest, most talented group of Chihuahua-hugging, oat-milk-latte-loving lefties on God’s green Earth.” It was the first time all week he took any jabs at all at the left.
He went on to note that Jimmy Kimmel was the first big host to give Jelly Roll a shot on TV, explaining that “this was the first place I ever got to sing a song on national TV. My first single, even before it went big on country radio. Jimmy believed in me and brought me here. I got to do my first skit here. I sat on a couch for the first time here.”
He also insisted that he decided to be a fill-in host for a particular reason.
“It hasn’t been easy being on this show this week. I knew what kind of a shit storm I was going to cause, and I was okay with that. Because I told myself I would never again be so afraid of being called ‘political’ that I didn’t say what I know is right,” he exclaimed.
The singer pretty openly claimed that President Trump is a racist — directly saying, “he only likes his own race” — and now is referring to such lines as something he knows is right and must be said.
Then he once again tried to claim he is a centrist who sees that both sides of the political aisle have their problems.
“And while everything else I’ve said this week has been a complete joke, this is not,” he tried to claim. “Our leaders on both sides are doing an absolute [bleep] job of trying to bring us together, y’all. And this is what we need to remember. That doesn’t mean that responsibility disappears. That means that responsibility then falls on us. And when I say ‘Us,’ I mean the old school we the people. There’s a famous quote I live by. Thank you. There’s a famous quote that I think about all the time that says, while we are fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become a monster ourselves.”
He ended saying, “And I hope that tonight, while he’s looking down from heaven, I made him proud. And tomorrow, I’m gonna try a little harder than I did today to love my neighbor, because sometimes they’re not all the way lovable, and I hope y’all will do the same thing. I’m going to go back here and cry.”
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