Luke Combs Declares He Is “Heavily Moderate” In Interview Discussing His Political Leanings

Participating in the 2021 Country Radio Seminar, Combs said of the Confederate flag, “There is no excuse for those images … I think as a younger man, those were images that I associated to mean something else.”

Combs went on to say in that 2021 interview, “And as I have grown in my time as an artist and as the world has changed drastically in the last five to seven years, I am now aware of how painful that image can be to someone else. I would never want to be associated with something that brings so much hurt to someone else.”

Continuing his Feb. 24 conversation on Popcast, Combs said, “I’ve been accused of a million things, man. Like, I would consider myself heavily moderate in everything. That’s to the point where, like, I’m not liberal enough for liberals, and I’m not conservative enough for conservatives, right?”

He added, “I kind of like it that way. Also, I kind of like people not really knowing what I have going on, politically. Like, why do we all care what everybody is? … I have friends that are liberal, I have tons of friends that are conservative. You know, it’s like, I have friends all across the board.”

From there, he spoke of attempts to “cancel” him that have been made by people dismayed with their perception of his politics.

Still, Combs said those efforts begged the question: “How is it hard to say ‘I’m not a racist?’”

Expounding on that, Combs said, “I’m not a guy that feels like I need to, like, push an agenda. One, I’m a musician. No one’s calling Donald Trump and asking him how to write a song. No one’s calling AOC and sayin’, ‘Well, how do I make my album better?’”

Further, he said, “I’m not on here to change anybody’s mind, or change what country music is, or tell anybody who they should vote for — how they should live their lives. I’m also not afraid to go out and say, ‘Hey, man, country music is a place where I feel like anyone should be able to come and enjoy the music.’”

The artist then lamented the lack of a “middle ground” or “grey area,” adding, “There’s no headlines, there’s no clickbait in being a moderate.”

“This incredibly loud minority of people that are on the extreme of either side are the things that folks in the media always are focusing on. In fact, a lot of people are out, living their lives. I go to the poll, and I vote on Election Day, and to me, that’s the most I can do. Like, I didn’t set out to be a political activist. I wanna come sing country music, people come to my shows, I want them to feel welcome. I want them to have a good time. We came here to forget all the bullsh*t that’s going on everywhere else.”

Combs then states that he wishes there were more spaces for people to just be themselves, saying, “We’re all different. That’s the beauty of the world.”

However, Combs did provide some caveats to spaces for everyone, stating, “Obviously, there are things that are not OK. To me, like being inherently a racist is not OK. That’s not something I’m in support of.”