John Rich is not holding back his animosity towards Nashville Mayor John Cooper. As the city prepares to return to Phase 3 on October 1, with downtown bars and restaurants now allowed to open at 50 percent capacity, recently-leaked correspondence between the mayor’s office and the Metro Health Department is more than enough evidence according to the singer that the mayor needs to leave his position.

“It is gutted,” John shared on Fox News, speaking of downtown Nashville. “Mayor John Cooper has betrayed our town. He has betrayed Music City … He has lied to our town, for months and months on end, and there are real casualties with this. Forget some of the big companies that have lost a lot of money.

“Let’s talk about musicians, let’s talk about bartenders and servers and security guards, all the people that work downtown in Nashville that were targeted by this Judas of a mayor,” the Redneck Riviera owner continued. “John Cooper, who claims he loves Nashville and loves Music City, yet he had the information at his fingertips that told him Broadway and the music scene is not what’s creating the COVID-19 problem in Nashville, but he decided not to display that information to us, and instead week after week lied to us, and kept us under control. Brought this town to its knees to try to put us into submission.”

In the correspondence, the emails indicated that the number of coronavirus cases directly linked to bars and restaurants in Nashville was shockingly low, with only 80 cases directly linked to bars and restaurants, although those numbers were never disclosed to the public.

“Now that we’ve uncovered what’s actually been going on, I’ll give him this: he’s created unity in a town that there’s been a lot of division in,” John said. “We’re all unified now that our mayor, regardless of your political persuasion, we all know now in this town who we’re dealing with. We have an actual, real live pariah on our hands … If he had any love for this town, he would apologize to Music City, and he would resign.”

Big & Rich just released a new single, “Stay Home,” inspired by the coronavirus pandemic. Download the song here.