Margo Price Changed Song Lyrics to Rip “Fascists” on What Could Be the Final ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

Margo Price Changed Song Lyrics to Rip “Fascists” on What Could Be the Final ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

Margo Price sure as hell isn’t letting the bastards fascists get her down.

On what may prove to be the final Jimmy Kimmel Live! episode ever, the country artist slyly changed the final lyrics to her song “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” to be explicitly anti-fascist. At the 2:48 mark of her ABC late-night musical performance, Price sings “keep all them fascists underground/don’t let the bastards get you down” rather than the original, “keep all them haters underground/don’t let the bastards get you down.”

“Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down” already had an amazing message tailor-written for this moment. The song, written by Price, is about the words of encouragement Kris Kristofferson gave to Sinéad O’Connor amid the backlash to her ripping up the photo of the pope live on another late-night broadcast program: Saturday Night Live.

Price’s performance took place on Tuesday, the day after Jimmy Kimmel first got himself into some hot water over a monologue joke that poked fun at MAGA Republicans doing all they can do publicly distance themselves from sharing similar political ideologies as Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer, Tyler Robinson.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.

Price’s timely performance happened the day before Kimmel was suspended by Disney and ABC for those very remarks. As of this writing, it is unclear if Jimmy Kimmel Live! will ever return to ABC’s airwaves.

Read the inside story on how Kimmel’s Disney suspension was handed down here.

Price’s Kimmel turn was actually not the only late-night musical moment this week altered for, well, this week. On Wednesday’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Marta Wainwright changed her song selection in favor of “Save the Country.”

“Last week, Thomas and I thought we were gonna do another song for tonight,” Wainwright said at the top of her NBC late-night performance, for which she was accompanied by pianist Thomas Bartlett. “But we decided to do this one because we thought it was the right song for this moment.”

Wainwright did not specify if the song was an acknowledgement of the early backlash to Kimmel’s monologue — The Tonight Show was likely taping, or close to it, when ABC handed Kimmel’s suspension down — or if it was simply related to the wave of division between the left and the right following the Kirk assassination.