Before genre-melding artist Kid Rock took the stage this weekend in Gonzales, La., for his headlining spot on the Rock the Country concert tour, he was introduced by a perhaps-unexpected presenter: former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.
“I wound up here tonight because I was having dinner at my house with Kid Rock a few months ago,” Carlson said from the stage. “He said, ‘You should come and open for me on my summer tour.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m honored, of course, but I don't play an instrument. Actually, I’m an unemployed talk-show host, so what would I do at your show?’ And he said, and I’m quoting now, ‘You will figure it out, and you will like it.’
“So that was two months ago,” Carlson continued. “And I woke up this morning, and I thought, I gotta go to Gonzales, Louisiana, and open up for Kid Rock. What am I gonna say? And I had no idea until I got here.”
Carlson then opined that, if one were to look on the internet, they might draw one conclusion about America, but that those assumptions appear to be unfounded after walking around the concert site.
“The country they tell me about on the internet is f***** up. The country that I experience when I walk through this crowd, or when I wake up in my town of 100 people in a rural area, is a beautiful country filled with beautiful people,” he said.
He then drew attention to a lighting rig at the venue that happened to be shaped like a cross. "A shape I like," he said.
“As I’m walking out [to the rig], this chick gets right in my face. She’s got two nose rings, a cross necklace and a Trump bracelet. And she looks at me right in the face, and she goes, ‘Ahhhhh!’ And she said, ‘I love you.’ And I said, ‘I love you, too.’ And I meant it. And I thought, that’s the America that I know. A little weird, slightly crazy, full of love, and beautiful. And that describes the man I’m here to introduce.
“Can you put a price on living free in the last free country?” he asked the crowd. “So let me tell you, my fellow Americans, what we've got. All gathered here tonight are free people united by our love of country and under God. And in the name of that country and that God, we’re here to celebrate a party that will not stop. And so, as I know you can, please be as noisy and disobedient as possible for Kid f****** Rock.”
Videos of Carlson’s appearance in Gonzales posted on X, both the full speech and clip, have been viewed over 1 million times altogether.