Donald Trump shakes hands with Jason Aldean as his wife singer Brittany Kerr looks on, on the last day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 18, 2024.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
With little more than 100 days before the 2024 presidential election, artists are aligning with the candidate of their choice. While the majority of musicians tend to keep their political preferences to themselves — in part for fear of alienating their audience — more and more country artists are speaking out in support of Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump.
Country music and conservative politics have been hand in hand for more than 50 years. As Richard Nixon ran for re-election in 1972, he began peeling away working and middle class Southern whites, who had previously voted Democratic. Concurrently, country music began shifting to the right, culminating in the Country Music Association making a compilation album for Nixon that year called Thank You, Mr. President, according to NPR. The shift built on Merle Haggard’s culturally groundbreaking 1969 hit “Okie from Muskogee,” which took on San Francisco “hippies” and praised a way of life where “we still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse.”
While many pop and hip-hop artists, including Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Charli XCX, Lil Nas X, Lizzo, Demi Lovato and Katy Perry have rushed to voice support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is poised to be the Democratic candidate following President Joe Biden’s July 21 announcement that he will no longer seek reelection, country artists have been slower to voice their choice. However, a number have been very vocal in aligning with Trump, one even going so far as to release a song that echoes Trump’s talking points.
Below are country artists who have proudly declared their support for Trump.
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Jason Aldean
From hanging out with Trump at Mar-A-Lago to sitting with the former president at the Republican National Convention, Aldean is a fervent Trump supporter (though perhaps not quite as zealous as his wife), even going so far as to sell Free Trump merch via their Instagram accounts following his May conviction for allegedly falsifying records. After the assassination attempt on Trump, Aldean posted the now-iconic photo of Trump at the rally, bloodied ear, fist raised in defiance in front of an American flag, and wrote, “This is what a warrior looks like. This is my guy.” That echoed what he told the Los Angeles Times in November, when he said, “I have nothing but good things to say about the guy.”
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Lee Greenwood
Greenwood performed his signature hit “God Bless the USA.” during the Republican National Convention, and later posted on Instagram, “My first time singing for an American president was in 1984 at the RNC Convention for Ronald Reagan. Forty years later, I was honored to sing for another charismatic and powerful president, Donald J. Trump! Thank you President Trump for fighting so hard for this country. It was a privilege to sing for you this week. Thank you @realdonaldtrump for mentioning our friendship, I am proud to be your friend and you make me proud to be an American!”
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Chris Janson
During the 2024 Republican National Convention, Janson teamed up with Nashville-based band Sixwire to provide entertainment for the RNC audience, performing Janson’s song “All American Guy.” This isn’t the first time Janson has performed at a Trump-celebrating RNC; during the 2016 Republican National Convention, Janson performed a rendition of the Tim McGraw song “Truck Yeah” (which he co-wrote) –replacing the title with the words, “Trump Yeah.”
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Brian Kelley
Kelley is taking Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto to heart, releasing a song with the same title on Friday (July 26). Sure to be played on repeat at Trump rallies, the song’s lyrics are straight out of Trump’s playbook, including “The streets are full of drugs and illegals/ It’s time to finish that wall and make America great again.” The former half of Florida Georgia Line posted on Instagram that he wrote the song on July 7, and then after the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump (and “being fed up with the current state of America”), he decided to release it. Kelley chose to perform another, less politically charged song (2022’s “American Spirit”) at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17.
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Kid Rock
Just before Trump’s Thursday night speech during the Republican National Convention, Kid Rock took the stage to perform a mashup of his songs “Cowboy” and “American Bad A–.” Earlier in the day on July 18, Kid Rock posted a video on X, saying, “We just touched down in Milwaukee to support our tried and true, red white and blue, 100% American badass president…God bless Donald Trump and God bless America.”
During his RNC speech on Thursday (July 18), Trump said of Kid Rock, “He became a friend of mine over the last 10 years and he’s amazing, everyone loves him.”
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John Rich
Rich and Trump became buds when Rich competed on and won Celebrity Apprentice in 2011. He has been a longtime supporter of Trump politically and embraces his far-right politics. Rich attended the RNC and frequently describes Trump as a “blue-collar billionaire … he is all about people and all about hard work.” While he derides politicians on both sides for lying, Rich makes an exception for Trump, praising him to News Nation for “talking like a regular person talks.”
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Travis Tritt
“This is my president!” Tritt, a longtime Trump supporter, posted on his social media accounts following the July 13 assassination attempt. In 2017, in a since-deleted tweet, he acknowledged that fans wanted to hear his music more than his political views — but politics have crept back into his social media, and by the 2020 election, he was tweeting pro-Trump rhetoric regularly, and declared on Nov. 3, 2020 that he was “voting red all the way down the ticket.” His support has only grown since then.
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Justin Moore
Shortly after the assassination attempt against Trump took place in Pennsylvania, Justin Moore took to X to share his thoughts, saying, “I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on, what went on today was sickening. Hopefully, everyone agrees on this. Sad day for our country. Thoughts and prayers go out to President Trump and his family. The fist pump after fired me up! Gave me chills. #TRUMP2024”
Back in 2016, Moore also told CMT After Midnite that he had supported Trump’s presidential campaign, saying, “I like the fact that he evokes a sense of winning, you know? I know it’s offensive to some people, and I’m not going to say I agree with everything he says, clearly. I think he’s just wacky enough to actually go do it. He doesn’t like to lose. I think he’ll win for our country if he were to get in there.”