Before his guest-hosting gig on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, lots of people had assumed that Jelly Roll supported President Donald Trump. He had never outright claimed this, but he didn’t denounce Trump, either — even when presented with the opportunity to do so at the Grammys this year.
So, when he made fun of Trump on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, people were confused (and some conservatives who support Trump were actually pretty outraged, calling him a “sellout” and a “traitor”). Even after sparking tons of backlash, Jelly Roll stood by what he said and took it a step further.
Some of his fans were convinced that the things he said on the show did not reflect his actual views.
Shows obviously have writers, and Kimmel is one of Trump’s most vocal celebrity critics. This made some of Jelly Roll’s fans suspect that someone else wrote his anti-Trump jokes and that the jokes did not represent his opinions. But on the last day of his guest-hosting gig, Jelly Roll actually addressed these rumors.
“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 said on the show.
But even if the writers did want him to say certain things about Trump, would he just go along with it if he were strongly opposed to it? Probably not. And he addressed this as well. “Do you think I would take orders from some sweaty little dork named Josh?” he questioned. “No. I was just telling it like it is, and for some reason, that seemed to freak a lot of people out.”
He started with jokes about Trump’s weight.
On his first night of hosting, Jelly Roll’s anti-Trump jokes that went viral and sparked backlash didn’t even directly attack Trump’s policies. Instead, Jelly Roll talked about his own weight loss journey and said he’s “lost an entire Donald Trump.” What angered his fans even more, though, is that he added, “Let’s be honest, based on his approval ratings, it seems like most of the country wants to do the same thing.”
After the jokes upset some of his fans, Jelly Roll explained that he was telling these jokes because that’s what hosts of late-night comedy shows do. In the days that followed, he didn’t tone it down and was actually far less subtle. At one point, he spoke about Trump’s trade war with Canada and called it “ridiculous.” Reacting to the threat that the cost of toilet paper could increase, Jelly Roll also said there’s “something poetic about it being expensive to wipe our a– just because the president is full of s—.”
On his final day on the show, he spoke about his personal views.
Reflecting on his time on the show, Jelly Roll said, “It is funny that before this week, everybody thought I was MAGA, and now they think I’m some sort of liberal snowflake.”
He also opened up about his personal motivations for appearing on the show. In spite of what some conservative news hosts have suggested, it wasn’t for the money. It was because he had some “serious” things he wanted to “get off (his) chest.”
“For the last six months, I’ve watched people decide who I am, what I am, what I believe, what I support, and what I don’t support,” he said. “And I felt that even more this week, just because I told a couple of jokes. And honestly, this goes back further for me, y’all. This goes back to February this year. I won my first Grammy. Actually, somehow on that night, I won three of them.”
He described it as one of the greatest moments of his career. But shortly after, he felt he “fumbled (his) words” when asked about ICE.
“Looking back, I don’t necessarily regret asking for more time before I spoke. I wish more people took more time before they spoke,” he said. “But I do wish I had found the words to express my heart just a little bit sooner.”
He said he feels it’s his “calling” to speak up for the “voiceless” and “those without representation.” However, he failed to do so that night.
“I try to speak for the unspoken for,” he said. “And that night at the Grammys, I had an opportunity to speak up for people who were scared, hurting, and felt like nobody was speaking for them. I had a microphone and I didn’t use it the right way.”
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