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    How Jason Aldean Explains Donald Trump (And Vice Versa)

    Like the former president, Aldean draws on the anxiety among GOP base voters.
    by Ronald Brownstein Jul 27, 2023 6 minutes
    Still from Jason Aldean's music video 'Try That in a Small Town'
    Source: Jason Aldean / YouTube

    The commercial success of the country star Jason Aldean’s ode to small-town vigilantism helps explain the persistence of Donald Trump’s grip on red America.  

    Aldean’s combative new song, “Try That in a Small Town,” offers a musical riff on the same core message that Trump has articulated since his entry into politics: that America as conservatives understand it is under such extraordinary assault from the multicultural, urbanized modern left that any means necessary is justified to repel the threat.

    In Aldean’s lyrics and the video he made of his song, those extraordinary means revolve around threats of vigilante force to hold the line against what he portrays as crime and chaos overrunning big cities. In Trump’s political message, those means are his systematic shattering of national norms and potentially laws in order to “make America great again.”

    [Read: Trump’s rhetoric of white nostalgia]

    Like Trump, Aldean draws on the pervasive anxiety among Republican

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