“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.”

Jelly Roll finished his four night run as Jimmy Kimmel’s guest host with a bang. His 18 minute monologue is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV. It’s been a remarkable week.

The video is below, followed by the transcript thanks to YouTube. transcript-– I’ve left in the time stamp if you want to match it to the video. Absolutely extraordinary.

Jelly Roll” “I have been having so much fun this week doing this, y’all. And honestly, I’ve been feeling really good about myself until I turned on Jeopardy the other night.

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Country music for 800. I only talk to God when I need a favor.
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Saying this man with a prominent cross tattoo. That’s jelly roll. Oh boy.
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Okay, I’ll take famous fatties for 300.
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And I do want to thank my friend Jimmy for asking me to fill in for him. I don’t fit the usual uh profile for a talk show host. I look more like a guy who would get a DUI on a tractor.
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No, I’m serious. It’s sad, but I look like a guy who got banned from Piggly Wiggly for beating off in the produce aisle.
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But here I am. And if my high school teachers could see me now,
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well, it would be the first time because I never showed up. Anyways, I did learn a lot about myself this
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week. For instance, did you know I’m the new mouthpiece for the left-wing lunatics in Hollywood?
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Now, of course, that’s not true. I don’t speak for Hollywood. I frankly hate it here. Have you seen Hollywood? Hollywood
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Boulevard is the most depressing and disgusting place on earth.
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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.
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But let’s be real about this, y’all. Do you think I would take orders from some sweaty little dork named Josh?
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No, I was just telling it like it is.
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And for some reason, that seemed to freak a lot of people out.
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I guess now that I’ve lost all this weight, folks can finally see I have balls.
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It is funny that before this week, everybody thought I was MAGA and now they think I’m some sort of liberal snowflake.
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I guess I’m just not used to people projecting their beliefs onto me.
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Although, a few years ago, I was so fat you could project a movie onto me.
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But I will say nobody has overreacted more to my monologues this week than the talking heads on cable news.
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Conservative TV anchor speaking:
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Jelly Roll took over and delivered a foul-mouthed rant. Yes. About the president. I thought Jelly was a good guy. Loves Jesus and all. That song saved me, but turns out he’s a phony.
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Look at this. Just last month, he was raving about the president and praising the UFC fight on the South Lawn. What happened, Jelly? Guess Hollywood was
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calling and you saw a big break and maybe a big check.
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First of all, I didn’t do this for the check. I’m rich, y’all.
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And listen, I don’t want to throw my buddy under the bus, but Jimmy Kimmel is cheap as hell.
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And secondly, do y’all know why I was raving about the UFC fight at the White House? Because it was awesome. Justin Gatesy pulled off one of the biggest upsets in UFC history, y’all.
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Just because I watched a fight on TV doesn’t mean I support everything this administration does. Just like hosting Jimmy Kimmel’s show doesn’t mean I have
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all of Jimmy Kimmel’s politics. 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.
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And most of the things I eat, I prefer to get with a stick and a string. That’s the truth.
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In fact, in fact, the second I leave here, I’m going elk hunting and I’m going to send the vegan producer Aaron her own elk steak.
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But I also spent this past week working in a building with the kindest, most talented group of Chihuahua hugging oat
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milk latte loving lefties on God’s green earth. And it was a blast, y’all.
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And I truly am going to miss all of my communist Antifa friends here on the staff of Jimmy Kim live. You guys are like family to me.
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And on a serious note, this was the first place that I ever got to sing a song on national TV. My first single, even before it went big on country radio, Jimmy believed in me. He brought me here. I got to do my first skit here.
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I sat on the couch for the first time here. I got to sing with Cleto, God Rest His Soul. And last year, they gave me a chance to host this thing for the first time, y’all.
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Thank y’all. And just so we’re clear, this year it wasn’t the hosting gig that I was looking forward to. It was the platform to get some very personal stuff
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off of my chest. So, if y’all don’t mind, can I get serious for a moment?
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For the 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
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don’t support. 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
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Grammy. Actually, somehow on that night, I won three of them.
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It was the single greatest moment and the greatest honor of my career. I got called on that stage. I got handed an award that I’ve been dreaming about
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since I was a child. And immediately after, I was asked to make what I felt at the time was a political stance. I
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fumbled my words. Looking back, I don’t necessarily regret asking for more time before I spoke. I wish more people took more time before they spoke. But I do
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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.
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And ironically, by trying so hard not to make a political statement, I became one. I spent my entire career trying not
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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.
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It’s simple for me, y’all. I always wanted the recovering addict, the felon who is trying to change his life, the single mama working a double hard for her
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family, and everybody else that ever felt forgotten to know that I represent those without representation.
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And speaking for those people is what I believe my calling is. I’ve always tried to be a voice for the voiceless because I know those people. Those are my people. I try to speak for the unspoken.
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And that night at the Grammys, I had an opportunity to speak up for people who were scared, hurting, and felt like nobody was speaking for them. I had a
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microphone and I didn’t use it the right way.
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But my daddy always told me it is
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It is it is never too late to do the right thing.
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So, I’m going to try to do the right thing right now because human dignity isn’t Republican nor Democrat.
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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
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are no boundaries or borders for broken families.
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I am a man of second chances. I have joked all week long on this show about how I’m a convicted felon who was given the opportunity to change his life. And the fact is that wasn’t a joke, y’all.
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This country gave me room and a chance to become something more than the biggest and worst mistake I ever made. I got to build a life. I got to make music. I got to take care of my family.
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And I got to stand on that stage that night and win a Grammy. And that is the American dream.
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And here’s what I know. The American dream can’t just be for people like me. It can’t be for just people like me.
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Second chances, grace, dignity, opportunity. It can’t just be for people like me. Redemption, empathy, decency, and hope. It can’t just be for people
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like me. The American dream should be for everybody.
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And I want y’all to know that despite the fact that I cuss and I tell jokes, I truly am a man of faith. And I can’t read the Gospels without being
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confronted by the words of Jesus himself when he said, “When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me in.
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That’s what Jesus said.
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He also gave us two commandments. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. And that’s what I should have said that night. There
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wasn’t an asterct after neighbor. There wasn’t a political party exemption. It did not require us to know what country you were born in. There wasn’t a
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sentence afterward that said, “Unless you’re afraid of them.” It just said, “Love your neighbor.”
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And I don’t know about y’all, but that’s the standard I want to be held to. And there’s one more thing I want to clear up. I want you to know that my father was one of my best friends. He was a
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veteran of the United States Marine Corps and he died in 2019.
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And this might be a hot take, but out of respect for him and everybody who has ever served and continues to serve this country, I will always shake the hand of
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the sitting president of the United States when asked. My father would have been disappointed had I done anything other than that. I’m proud that I was
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able to shake the president of the United States hand. I’m also proud that I live in a country where I can make jokes about him. Ain’t that’s what great about being an American. The democracy, the freedom, the freedom of speech.
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And y’all know what I’m talking about.
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The same freedom of speech that both sides of the aisle claim they want until they hear something they don’t want to hear.
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And I will shake the hand of any president that occupies that office because a handshake is not an endorsement. A conversation is not an
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allegiance and a joke is not a political point of view. And in my business, taking a picture with a political figure or anybody else for that matter doesn’t
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mean you agree or disagree with their policies or politics. More often than not, I don’t.
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I want to leave y’all with this because I was scared to tell this story. It’s so personal.
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My father, Buddy Dford, God rest his soul,
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was a blue back Democrat and his brother was a red hat Republican. And this might be hard for people to understand out there, but they were absolutely best
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friends. And when my father was in hospice on his deathbed and I had the opportunity to ask him everything I
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wanted to know, I said, “Dad, how are you and your brother so tight when y’all didn’t agree about anything?” And he looked at me and said, “Son, we agreed
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about hundreds of things. We only didn’t agree about a few things, and we were not going to let the few things we didn’t agree about define our entire
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relationship.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
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Because here’s the truth and the fact of the matter. Politicians and algorithms make an absolute fortune convincing us that the person across the street from us is the reason our life is hard.
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And transparently, I don’t know how qualified I am to be standing up here talking about this. I don’t have any qualifications at all. But something I’ve learned about God over the years is
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he doesn’t have much of a history of rating around for perfect people.
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So if being imperfect is the only qualification I need, hell, I might be the best candidate.
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And I just want us to remember that the person across the street from us is a human being before they’re a voter. And what I want to ask of myself is to defend human dignity even when it could
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cost me something. It hasn’t been easy being on this show this week. I knew what kind of a storm I was going to cause and I was okay with that because I told myself I would never be so afraid
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of being called political again that I didn’t say what I know is right.
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And while everything else I’ve said this week has been a complete joke, this is not. Our leaders on both sides of the aisle are doing an absolute job of trying to bring us together, y’all.
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And this is what we need to remember.
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That doesn’t mean that responsibility disappears. That means that responsibility then falls on us. And when I say us, I mean the old school we the people.
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There’s a famous quote I live by. Thank you.
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There’s a famous quote that I think about all the time that says, “While we are fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become a monster ourselves. We may disagree. We may
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argue. We may vote completely differently. 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
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right about that. And he was right about something else.
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It is never too late to do the right thing.
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And I hope that tonight while he’s looking down from heaven, I made him proud.
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And tomorrow, I’m going to try a little harder than I did today to love my neighbor cuz sometimes they’re not all the way lovable. And I hope y’all will do the same thing.
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I’m going to go back here and cry. We got to take a quick break, but stick around. We got a lot more coming for you.