When Caitríona Perry departed the RTÉ Six O’Clock News for the BBC’s Washington DC bureau in 2023, she doubtless anticipated her life changing in all sorts of ways. What she may not have expected is that she would one day find herself fending off apparent romantic advances from the unofficial musical mascot of Donald Trump’s Maga movement. But that’s what seems to have happened ahead of Trump’s inauguration in Washington, as she interviewed All Summer Long singer Kid Rock.
“I love to go skiing,” Rock said. “You sound sexy. Do you want to go with me?”
He had already asked Perry, from Rathmines in Dublin, about her plans for the rest of the day. “I’m standing on a rooftop in these very, very chilly conditions,” she said. “We’ll be on air for 12 hours so I don’t think I’ll have anywhere near as fun a day as you have planned for yourself!”
Fun is Kid Rock’s credo – the guiding philosophy behind his 30-year career in music. Having grown up in a well-to-do suburb of Detroit, the singer – real name Robert James Ritchie – made his reputation in the 1990s with good-time rap-rock that tapped into his background in hip-hop and his love of country music. He gained further notoriety for his brief marriage to Pamela Anderson and for a 2004 Super Bowl appearance during which he wore the US flag as a poncho – outraging military veterans who felt he had desecrated Old Glory.
But in the past decade, he has embarked on a new phase of his life as a clapping seal to Donald Trump, whom he introduced at the recent Republican Convention, telling the Maga faithful to “fight, fight”.
Ritchie (53) is not a recent convert – one of those celebrities who has come around to Trump as a second presidential term has seemed more and more inevitable. “I’m digging Donald Trump,” he said all the way back in 2016, early in Trump’s first tilt at the White House. “My feeling: let the business guy run it like a business. And his campaign has been entertaining as s***.”
In the time since, he has incorporated Trump into his musical identity. Recent hits include Don’t Tell Me How To Live, where he claimed, “Every opinion has a millennial offended”. Ritchie also led a boycott of his favourite beer, Bud Light, after it partnered with a transgender influencer. And last year, he toured the American heartland with his Rock The Country Tour, where former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson introduced him on stage and at which he cautioned the audience against foreign influence such as “soccer”.
He was in Washington to perform at a Trump rally at the Capitol One Arena on the eve of the inauguration. He seems to have enjoyed the experience – judging, at least, by his mood as Perry interviewed him. That he felt confident enough to appear to openly make a pass at a journalist on live television shows just how at home he is in Trump’s new world order. Whether it’s a place where the rest of us will want to live is a question that will surely be answered sooner rather than later.
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