Country music star Jelly Roll apparently decided that dropping 300 pounds was not enough of a transformation. Now he is trying his hand at late-night political comedy, and President Trump became one of his targets while Jelly Roll guest-hosted “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
During his opening monologue, Jelly Roll went after President Trump’s weight and physical fitness, using his own dramatic weight loss as the setup.
“Well, Mr. President, from one fat pig to another, take it from me that physical fitness is very important. And trust me, you’ll be happy to see your penis again,” Jelly Roll said. “It’s crazy. Think about this, y’all. In the last few years, I’ve lost 300 pounds. That means I’ve lost an entire Donald Trump.”
He then moved from jokes about President Trump’s appearance to politics.
“And let’s be honest, based on his approval ratings, it seems like most of the country wants to do the same thing,” Jelly Roll added.
Nothing says fresh, groundbreaking late-night television quite like another celebrity making jokes about President Trump. Apparently that particular well has not run dry after all these years.
The bigger problem for Jelly Roll may be his audience.
Country music has plenty of fans who support President Trump, and Jelly Roll previously presented himself as someone who was not particularly political. There is a substantial difference between avoiding politics and stepping behind Jimmy Kimmel’s desk to fire off jokes about President Trump and his supporters.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson claims the reaction has already been costly.
“We ran all of his social media through various tracking and found at least 200,000 unsubscribes since he started hosting Jimmy Kimmel,” Johnson said.
Johnson argued that the backlash was not simply because Jelly Roll told a joke about President Trump.
“And why is that? Because he told a Trump joke and we can’t take it? We don’t have a sense of humor? No, actually. The right are the only people with a sense of humor, Donald Trump did an entire 90 minutes on SNL where all he did was make fun of himself,” Johnson said.
If Johnson’s numbers are accurate, Jelly Roll just received a quick lesson in understanding his customer base.
Celebrities are free to say whatever they want. That is how free speech works. But audiences have the exact same freedom to change the channel, unfollow an account, stop streaming music or spend their entertainment dollars somewhere else. Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from criticism or commercial consequences.
Jelly Roll has built an enormously successful career partly because audiences connected with his personal story. His struggles, redemption, weight loss and unusually candid personality helped make him relatable to millions of people who often feel ignored by the entertainment establishment.
That makes this excursion into predictable late-night Trump material particularly strange.
There is also something deeply tired about celebrity culture treating attacks on President Trump as automatically daring. In Hollywood, mocking President Trump is about as rebellious as ordering avocado toast. The applause is practically included with the studio lighting.
Jelly Roll can certainly make whatever jokes he wants. His fans can also decide whether they still find them funny.
And if hundreds of thousands really are reaching for the unfollow button, the punchline may have landed somewhere Jelly Roll never expected.
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