The country establishment’s loudest Trump ally just weighed in on Jelly Roll roasting the president on national television, and the verdict is the one nobody had circled: respect.
The Tennessee hitmaker behind Big & Rich, one of Nashville’s most outspoken conservatives, addressed the fallout from Jelly Roll’s Jimmy Kimmel Live hosting stint in a new interview on The Benny Show, and instead of piling on, John Rich delivered a certification. “He knows how this works. OK? He knows who the audience is,” Rich said. “And so I have to think he really believes every single word he said, or he wouldn’t have said it.“
Rich laid out the stakes as only a Nashville lifer can. “You do understand in country music that half or more of your audience may disown you,” he said of statements that cut against a star’s presentation. “They may turn their back on you. They may stop listening to you. They may turn you off. But you make the statement anyway.“
Then the twist. “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,” Rich concluded. “That’s Jelly Roll. That’s who he is.” The backlash, he argued, comes from fans who “didn’t know that’s who he really is,” and his lone criticism was timing: “He should have been talking that way from the very beginning, and he probably wouldn’t have this problem.” Rich knows the price tag personally, saying his own outspokenness has cost him radio support, a record deal, and industry invitations over the years, which is what makes his read on the math carry weight.
He even placed the moment in country’s oldest tradition, invoking the genre’s truth-tellers from Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard to Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, an invocation that lands heavier than ever this month.
The man being judged already entered his own plea, from the Kimmel desk itself. “It is funny that, before this week, everybody thought I was MAGA. And now they think I’m some sort of liberal snowflake,” Jelly Roll told viewers during the stint, adding: “Sure, I lean left on some things, but like most folks, I’m pretty down the middle.” Then the creed: “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.“
The Verdict Nobody Saw Coming
The show’s own audience, notably, was tougher on Jelly than its guest was. “He praised Dolly Parton but obviously didn’t take her advice!” read one of the most-liked replies, invoking the icon who famously never did politics, while another declared, “Thank you, John! He has blown his career,” and a third eyed the institutions: “I bet the Grand Ole Opry is having some MAJOR regrets at this point.” Rich himself drew the warmth, from “a true patriot” to “one of the great thinkers of country music.“
Country music spent a week arguing about which side Jelly Roll is on. Its loudest conservative just answered: his own, exactly as advertised.
In Nashville, that is the highest compliment there is.
