John Rich Calls Out Brad Paisley

John Rich has asked fellow country music star Brad Paisley to give him fair warning the next time he might be hosting a political fundraiser.

Last week, the White House had shared a media advisory in which it stated that first lady Jill Biden would be visiting Tennessee, more specifically in Nashville and then for a political event in nearby Franklin for a political event. On Friday, Fox 17 News Nashville shared video footage on social media of Biden touching down at Nashville International Airport. The outlet further reported that the first lady was “in town for a private political event in Franklin.”

Before that, The Tennessee Lookout had reported that Biden would be attending an event at “Brad and Kim Paisley’s home to join country music influencers before potential endorsements of President [Joe] Biden.”

On Sunday, Rich, took to X, formerly Twitter, to address Paisley and complain that the traffic caused by Jill Biden’s visit to the Volunteer State was “brutal.”

“This visit shut down the interstate in Nashville, but I heard Jill raised a ton of money @BradPaisley’s house,” wrote musician Rich. “Hey Brad, give us a heads up next time bro. That traffic was brutal.”

Paisley has yet to respond to Rich’s message at time of writing. Newsweek has contacted a representative of Paisley via email for comment.

Rich is known for speaking his mind, often causing a stir on social media. In June 2023, he shared social media posts saying there were links between vaccinations and autism, which were met with criticism online. In August, he released a song called I’m Offended! which hit out at woke culture.

Back in June 2021, Paisley teamed up with Jill Biden to promote the COVID-19 vaccines as the world slowly emerged from the height of the pandemic.

Borrowing from Dolly Parton’s classic track “Jolene,” Paisley sang in Nashville: “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine / Don’t say no just because you can.”

Jill Biden was booed by the crowd when she pointed out that the state of Tennessee “still has a little bit of a way to go” with regards to its vaccination rates.

“Well, you’re booing yourselves!” Jill Biden told her detractors. “So that’s why I wanted to visit today, because your health and your family’s health matter to me and to your president.”

While country music stars are traditionally seen as conservative, Paisley has stated that does not align completely with the GOP or the Democrats.

“The bottom line is I defy category,” the musician told U.K. newspaper The Guardian in March 2023. “I definitely am one of the more confusing people that way. The minute you affiliate, ‘Here’s what I am,’ are you all those things? I’m certainly not all of those things on either side.”

Jill Biden’s outing comes as her husband’s reelection efforts recently took a hit. In 2022, classified documents were found at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, as well as in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in Washington. The discoveries prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to oversee an investigation into whether the classified material was mishandled.

Special counsel Robert Hur—a Republican lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland during the Trump administration until he resigned in February 2021—found that even though Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” while a private citizen, he concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” even if Biden was not the sitting president. He also noted that Biden and the White House cooperated with investigators throughout.

Despite finding no criminal wrongdoing on the part of Biden, Hur questioned the president’s mental fitness in his report, describing the president’s memory as “significantly limited” during interviews and stating that he could not remember when he ceased being vice president, nor when his son Beau Biden died.

Beau Biden, the former attorney general of Delaware and eldest son of the president and his late first wife, died of a brain tumor in 2015. His death is something Joe Biden has often referenced in his public speeches.

Jill Biden addressed the report in an email to donors on Saturday, writing of her husband: “Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave him.”

“If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years—you measure it in grief,” she went on. “So many of you know that feeling after you lose a loved one, where you feel like you can’t get off the floor. What helped me, and what helped Joe, was to find purpose. That’s what keeps Joe going, serving you and the country we love.”

“I hope you can imagine how it felt to read that attack,” the first lady continued, seemingly referring to Hur. “We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.”

Jill Biden added: “Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day. Joe has wisdom, empathy and vision. He’s learned a lot in those 81 years. His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.”