Last month, country star Jelly Roll’s interaction with President-elect Donald Trump at the UFC 309 event held at Madison Square Garden ignited a spirited conversation on social media, fueled by body language analysis.
Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason Bradley Deford, displayed undeniable enthusiasm when meeting Trump, a reaction he chose to defend on this week’s episode of his wife, Bunny XO’s podcast, “Dumb Blonde.”
“I don’t care who you were, if you were in that building, you would have goosebumps on your skin,” he said of Trump’s grand entrance at MSG. “And you see, and what you see is the president-elect, who was elected 8 days ago, coming in with his entire cabinet – almost. You know what I mean? And their children and their grandchildren. And it was powerful, friend. Like I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on.
The event, held 11 days after the election, was star-studded, including some of Trump’s staunchest supporters, including Elon Musk, Kid Rock and UFC founder and CEO Dana White.
“Everyone’s like, ‘You look really — you’ve got a crazy smile on your face.’ I’m like, ‘You all can’t feel what we were feeling,'” he said of the social media video that showed him anxiously watching Trump’s procession. “Like that room was beating. Was. And when Trump walks right by me, I’m like, ‘He doesn’t know who I am.’ So right then I said, ‘Damn it, I won’t be able to meet the President.’
However, the men’s meeting ended.
“I kind of look at it and [Trump] Makes eye contact. And what you didn’t see in the video was that he gives me trump points,” Jelly Roll explained. “I go to shake his hand, I put my hand on his shoulder,” he recalled, adding that he was worried the Secret Service would not approve of the touch. “And he put his hand on my shoulder.”
Jelly Roll said Trump told her he loved her emotional song, “Save Me,” released in 2020, and that the country singer is “doing incredible things.”
Speaking more about the reaction, Jelly Roll told his wife that meeting Trump was no easy task. “There is no possibility that I will not be able to meet the newly elected President,” he said. “I don’t care…If I got a call at any time to go meet Joe Biden, I would stop what I was doing to go meet him. He is an active President. “I didn’t care what people thought… what I thought about his policies,” he admitted.
“I don’t hide behind things like ‘I’m not political’ – I’m not political!… I like to talk about things I’m passionate about. Plus, I love knowing about them. I don’t know enough about politics to say I know anything about what’s going on, what anyone’s stance is on policy. I don’t really know,” he said.
“I didn’t grow up in a voting culture. My father did not pressure me to vote. The singer, who grew up in Tennessee, said my mother didn’t pressure me to vote. “However, they put pressure on me to ‘respect our president,'” he added. “It is the hardest job in the world. Respect whoever has it, you know?”
“When I look back at my relationship with politics — like, we didn’t see election night. I don’t remember a single thing that we as a family were really giving a damn about – who was getting elected. So I’ve always carried it with me.”
