The rapper/country musician known as Jelly Roll once again waxed political while hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week.
The drama started earlier in the week when he took repeated shots at President Donald Trump while guest-hosting the late-night television show.
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The jokes, including referring to Trump as a “fat pig” who’s lost “most of his f–king marbles,” didn’t sit well with Trump supporters.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire even went so far as to accuse Jelly Roll of having “sold out.”
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Jelly Roll responded to the backlash on Thursday by getting political again, but this time in a less aggressive fashion. He began by suggesting that he’d written his own jokes and was just “telling it like it is.”
“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. “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. I guess now that I’ve lost all this weight, folks can finally see I have balls. It is funny that before this week everybody thought I was MAGA. And now they think I’m some sort of liberal snowflake,” he added.
He then argued that his recent participation in the UFC Freedom 250 event/fight doesn’t make him a Trump supporter just like his appearance on leftist comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show doesn’t make him a leftist.
“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,” he explained.
“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,” he added.
He concluded with an emotional spiel about his prior apolitical stance.
“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.”
During the Grammys, he dodged questions about his politics:
Jelly Roll refuses to jump on anti-ICE bandwagon at the Grammys.
“I can tell you that people shouldn’t care to hear my opinion. I’m a dumb redneck.”
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) February 2, 2026
“Looking back, I don’t necessarily regret asking for more time before I spoke,” he said on Thursday. “I wish more people took more time before they spoke. But I do wish I had found the words to express my heart just a little bit sooner. But I was afraid that anything I was going to say was going to be immediately taken as a political statement. And ironically, by trying so hard not to make a political statement, I became one.”
“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. But now that I have that right, it’s one I plan to exercise this coming November,” he added.
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He concluded by stressing that, despite his desire to vote for a political party, he evidently hasn’t chosen one yet.
“My daddy always told me it is never too late to do the right thing,” he said. “So I am going to try to do the right thing right now because human dignity isn’t Republican nor Democrat. Compassion isn’t left-wing, and mercy isn’t right-wing. Pain and healing knows no partisanship. Hurting hearts are more important than poll numbers, and there are no boundaries or borders for broken families.”
Some on the right have since accused him of trying to perform “damage control”:
He’s full of shit. He realized that he unsuited his bread and butter. That when he attacked conservatives he was attacking 90% of his audience and now he’s trying to run damage control! He’s full of it, he deserves what has happened, and no one should fall for this bs con man’s… https://t.co/B8wkqdZLWj
— Brandon Wilkinson (@brawil86) August 29, 2026
