Given 500 guesses, it’s unlikely anyone would completely nail the certifiably nonsensical lineup of guests that hit the red carpet together at the Nashville premiere of alt-right provocateur Candace Owens’ documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. The bingo-card-from-hell featured none other than recent vocal anti-semite Kanye West, homophobic slur-spewing Kid Rock, and Ray J for some reason.
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold premiere was a who’s who of some of the worst people you know. MMA fighter Colby Covington stopped in, appearing chummy alongside West, Owens, and Ray J despite his history of making blatantly racist remarks about his Black opponents. The common denominator across their interests just so happens to be Donald Trump. Earlier this year, Ray J brought admitted abuser Kodak Black to meet with the former president. Meanwhile, Covington built an entire career persona around being a MAGA supporter.
According to ET, country musician Jason Aldean also stepped out for the premiere alongside his wife Brittany, who just weeks ago received a storm of backlash in response to transphobic comments that led to her husband’s publicity firm of 17 years removing him from their roster and Maren Morris coining the ultimate comeback insult: “Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”
West and Owens have been tapped in with one another for years. Back in 2018, the rapper tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” To this she responded with a proposition that no one asked for or needed: “I need you to help wake up the Black community.” Lately, their directionless mission to shake the Black community out of an imaginary stupor culminated in the debut of West’s longsleeved “White Lives Matter” shirt. West and Owens sported the matching merchandise in Paris last week during a showcase of his new Yeezy line at a YZY SZN 9.
Their presence together was nonsensical in Paris, but the documentary premiere being held in such close proximity to their abhorrent and racist actions is only exacerbated by the fact that it was held at the historic Woolworth Theatre. Located in the historic district of downtown Nashville, the venue once hosted some of the first lunch-counter sit-ins during the civil rights movement. It’s also the location where the late congressman John Lewis received his first arrest for civil disobedience after being beaten and physically burned by customers during a protest in February 1960. (The building actually sits on a street recently renamed for the civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis Way.)
Aldean’s brother-in-law Chuck Wicks, a fellow country singer and onetime Dancing With the Stars contestant, helmed the transformation of the historic Woolworth building into an 850-seat theater. In an interview with The Tennessean, he said all references to the historic sit-ins, like the original sign, will remain. “It’s always been here, and we’re going to keep that here,” Wicks said. “Something that’s important to us is that anything that we can keep in this building to keep the legacy alive of what this building has been continues to be.”
So much for that.