Luke Bryan defends Katy Perry's voting controversy while responding to an 'American Idol' critic

• Country singer and "American Idol" judge Luke Bryan chimed in on a Twitter thread about an election.
• Someone suggested boycotting the show due to Bryan and cohost Katy Perry's political affiliations.

"American Idol" judge and pop star Katy Perry endorsed a controversial candidate for Los Angeles mayor and now Luke Bryan has joined a discussion about the criticism on Twitter.

On Tuesday morning, Jezebel published a story with the headline: "Katy Perry Gets Dragged to Hell After Voting for Anti-Abortion Billionaire Rick Caruso."

In a tweet reply to the news article, a person with a few hundred followers named Rohit Sharma wrote the following message, tagging both country singer Luke Bryan and the show he cohosts, "American Idol."

"Good. She deserves it," Sharma wrote in reference to Katy Perry. "Between that and [Luke Bryan] inviting Ron DeSantis on stage, I would say It's time to officially boycott 'American Idol' but does anyone even watch it?"

Then Bryan himself, who has 9.4 million followers on Twitter, replied: "Yea. 10 million people a week. On a slow week."

Earlier this year TVLine reported that the 20th season premiere of "American Idol" brought in six million total viewers. The finale reportedly had 5.6 million total viewers.

Sharma replied to Bryan's claim.

"Great," they said in a follow-up tweet. "Now that I have your attn do you support him using immigrants across the country as political stunts? Do you agree with removing and [sic] references to the LGBTQ community in schools? Or banning black history? Do you agree with him denying elections? You're influential. He's awful."

The commenter was referencing major news stories surrounding DeSantis' recent actions as Florida's state governor, which include signing a bill to "limit discussions of race," flying migrant people from Texas to Martha's Vineyard for a political stunt, and backing the infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill.

This past August, a Florida judge ruled that the DeSantis and GOP-supported "Stop WOKE law" was unconstitutional. As Insider reported, the law would have "clamped down on diversity training in the workplace."

In September, The Miami Herald published an editorial that said DeSantis is "flirting with Christian nationalism" — which overlaps with white supremacy.

Luke Bryan has previously said he generally 'stays out of politics' and explained his approach to things like diversity and racism

Earlier this fall, Bryan announced during a concert that the profits from his Florida concerts would go towards hurricane relief. Governor DeSantis came out on stage as part of the announcement. When the inclusion of the Republican politician drew criticism, Bryan shared the above statement on Twitter.

This isn't the first time this year that Bryan has weighed in on a national news story about political issues.

At the start of 2022, during a Television Critics Association (TCA) panel, two "American Idol" judges — Bryan and Lionel Richie — were asked directly about the lack of diversity in the country music scene.

"Morgan Wallen uses a racial slur and he's more popular than ever," a TCA member said during the panel's Q&A section. "I'm wondering what 'Idol' can do and what you guys can do to address this issue and maybe diversify country music more."

The reporter's question referenced Wallen, a country singer who broke through in the industry after he appeared on NBC's competition series "The Voice." In 2020, Wallen was filmed yelling a racial slur on the streets of Nashville. He was dropped from some radio station playlists and had his recording contract suspended, but his album sales also increased by 339%.

"First of all, there's racism throughout the whole country," Bryan said. "Just to just sit here and single out country music as some kind of racist format is not altogether natural and true."

He continued: "I think we are going to grow, and you are going to see tremendous changes. You bring up the Morgan situation — that's a situation that I think country music and the industry is doing everything they can to recognize, and these things take time. They take time in the National Football League. They take time as a country."

You can read his full statements and further context on Morgan Wallen in Insider's report on that panel here.