‘OK, Dude!’: Newsmax Host Deletes His Jelly Roll Music on the Air in Protest of Musician’s Trump Jokes

 

Newsmax’s Carl Higbie deleted all of Jelly Roll’s music from of his phone while on-air in protest of the musician’s jokes about President Donald Trump as the singer guest-hosted for Jimmy Kimmel.

Higbie responded on Thursday night’s Frontline to comments from Jelly Roll, real name Jason Bradley DeFord, on his final night filling in for Kimmel.

At one point this week, Jelly Roll directly addressed those who may be upset with jokes he’s made at Trump’s expense while he’s hosted the show.

Jelly Roll said during his monologue:

Any U.S. president should be able to handle a few jokes, right? They should also be able to handle gas prices, healthcare, and the occasional international conflict. Look, y’all, I get it. Some people are mad at me for goofing on Trump. But if you wanted me to make jokes about Kamala Harris, you should have voted for her. So for those who threatened to stop listening to my music based on my comments last night, I just want to say with conviction, go right ahead.

Higbie responded to Jelly Roll’s invitation to ditch his music seriously.

“Go ahead? OK, dude, OK. I’ll be deleting his music as we speak,” Higbie said as the camera showed a close-up of Higbie’s phone as he deleted Jelly Roll’s music from the device.

Newsmax contributor Kay Smythe said she’d likely be doing the same as she trashed Jelly Roll as a “celebrity sl*t” and predicted he’ll likely be losing popularity with his fans after his late-night gig.

She said:

Jelly Roll started out as a rapper. No one really took him that seriously, so he leaned into country music, started hanging out with actually successful country music singers and writers, and producers. He had a couple of hits in there. Most of his hits, I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but there’s usually someone else’s name on the box there. And then he tried to go more pop, then he tried to go Christian, and now, I don’t know, he’s just kind of a celebrity sl*t.

During Jelly Roll’s Thursday show, he joked people had gone from thinking he was MAGA to now thinking he’s a “liberal snowflake.” During an emotional monologue about his background, he pleaded for people to ditch political tribalism.

“We may disagree. We may argue. We may vote completely differently,” he said. “But let’s try not to let the couple of things we disagree about forget the hundreds and hundreds of things we have in common. My daddy was right about that. And he was right about something else: It is never too late to do the right thing.”

Jelly Roll took the Kimmel guest-host baton from longtime Trump foe Rosie O’Donnell, who fled the country over Trump’s 2024 win.

Watch above via Newsmax.

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Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.