It’s Saturday night in Laughlin, Nevada, a resort town about 90 miles south of Las Vegas, and Jason Aldean is about to introduce the song that most everyone has come to hear. “I told you guys earlier we put out a brand new album last year called Highway Desperado , right?” Aldean says, pausing for a moment to wipe his face with his hand. He’s wearing a perfectly weathered Charlie Daniels Band T-shirt, along with tight-fitting jeans, and his signature straw hat, and speaks with the commanding ease of an everyman superstar.
“What I didn’t tell you was that the first single that came off that album completely made everybody lose their shit,” he continues. The entire venue erupts into applause, and a sea of phones goes up. “I don’t know, call me crazy, I just feel like it’s a crazy day in our country when I’m the asshole for calling people out for disrespecting our cops.
..” The din from the audience is so loud that it’s difficult to make out every word as various, competing chants spontaneously break out: USA! USA! USA! LET’S GO BRANDON! “.
.. fucking up our cities and acting like a bunch of idiots!” Amid the cheering and whistling, various concertgoers raise their aluminum beer bottles and boot-shaped souvenir glasses in accord with his speech.
“Check it out. It ain’t my job to stand up here and tell you guys who to vote for come November. That is not my place to do that.
” TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! “ I make it very known where I st.