PHILADELPHIA – Just before his planned visit to the City of Brotherly Love, President Biden said wages were at their highest since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but blue-collar workers there feel their income hasn’t improved much.

‘We’re still struggling. We could be better,’ Donny told Fox News. ‘Wages could be better.’

NO BROTHERLY LOVE FOR BIDEN AS WORKERS SLAM ‘BIDENOMICS’ BEFORE PHILLY VISIT:

Joe, who works in a butcher shop, said inflation was so bad it didn’t matter if wages increased slightly.

‘Everything’s so high,’ he said. ‘Food is so expensive right now it’s not even funny.’

Biden tweeted Sunday that ‘real wages for the average American worker,’ were higher than before the pandemic.

Twitter had marked the president’s claim as containing a ‘factual error’ because real wages — adjusted for inflation — were higher on March 15, 2020, when lockdowns began in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But they were higher at the end of February, after the first COVID-19 cases were diagnosed.

‘I work as much as I can so this way I can make ends meet,’ Joe told Fox News.

‘I’m making a little more money, but I’m also paying more for everything,’ he added. ‘So nothing’s really changed.’

Chauncey didn’t see improvement, either.

‘I really can’t tell the difference, honestly,’ the trucker said. ‘I just wake up every day and just do what I got to do. What else can you do?’

Biden is set to visit Philadelphia on Thursday as he continues touring the nation pushing ‘Bidenomics.’ But several blue-collar workers criticized the president, arguing he hadn’t done enough to help improve wages.

‘He needs to get the hell out of office,’ Dan, a bakery worker, told Fox News. ‘I think soon as he gets out of office we’ll be in much better position.’

He said the economy is ‘absolutely worse’ than before Biden came into office, though he acknowledged wages had gone up slightly.

‘That’s only because everything’s so high,’ he said. Wages must increase ‘if everything in the world is so much higher.’

But William, a Philadelphia native, thought blue-collar workers’ situation had improved.

‘I’m glad that Biden did take over because there’s more jobs opportunity now,’ he said. ‘We was better when he took over office.’

Valerie said problems with the economy predated Biden. 

‘I don’t feel like the president before him did anything, and he’s not doing anything,’ she told Fox News. ‘I feel like we’re still in the same rut that we were in. Like we haven’t move forward. We’re still stuck.’

WASHINGTON – The two IRS whistleblowers who alleged the Justice Department meddled in an investigation into President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, were not convincing, Democrats told Fox News. 

‘I believe that they believe themselves. Whether they’re right or wrong, really is in their mind and the determination of other people,’ Rep. Kweisi Mfume said. ‘I happen to believe that they’re wasting time on this.’

Rep. Daniel Goldman told Fox News, ‘They are good-faith actors who misconstrue the third-hand information that they received.

‘I think they were frustrated that the case didn’t move forward as they had hoped after all their hours,’ the New York Democrat continued. ‘They were frustrated that they were removed from the case after there were significant leaks to The Washington Post, and they’re expressing their frustration in this way.’

Hunter Biden’s legal team alleged the whistleblowers leaked investigation information to The Washington Post, but the whistleblowers’ lawyers have pushed back against that claim.

REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS SPLIT ON WHETHER IRS WHISTLEBLOWERS ARE TRUSTWORTHY:

Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year special agent for the IRS whose identity was revealed Wednesday, and Greg Shapley, a former IRS investigation supervisor, claimed the Justice Department did not handle the investigation into Hunter Biden in an ordinary way. 

The two were invited to testify at a hearing before leaders of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Accountability and Ways and Means committees.

The whistleblowers claimed there was a pattern of ‘slow-walking investigative steps’ into the president’s son before the 2020 presidential election and efforts to tip off Hunter before investigative actions. 

In one case, Shapely recalled that an assistant U.S. attorney told Hunter Biden’s lawyers the IRS was readying to execute a search warrant on a storage unit used by the president’s son.

The tip destroyed ‘our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated or concealed,’ Shapely said.

House Republicans believed the whistleblowers.

‘I think they’re very credible,’ Republican Rep. Russell Fry told Fox News. ‘Their testimony has been corroborated by the FBI, who just was in here this week.’ 

Ziegler, a Democrat, ‘doesn’t fit the mold of a partisan hack’ Fry said. 

Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, agreed.

‘They’re absolutely credible,’ Smith said. ‘Their facts are lining up. No one has countered anything that they have said.’

Lawmakers noted the personal risks taken by the whistleblowers to come forward. 

‘They’re showing tremendous courage to come forward,’ Republican Rep. Gary Palmer told Fox News. ‘And it shows something that I think has been sorely lacking in the Biden administration, and that is fidelity to uphold the laws of the United States.’

Fry agreed. ‘They are putting their own careers and their families at risk by being here,’ he said.

To watch full interviews with lawmakers, click here. 

Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

The contests have names such as Predator Slam, Squirrel Scramble and Final Fling for Fox, sometimes challenging hunters to bag the heaviest coyote or the heftiest bunch of squirrels to win a cash prize.

While participants seek prey in the name of fundraising, animal rights advocates are training their sights on contests they see as senseless slaughters. With bans in eight states, activists are now looking to New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering a proposal recently approved by the Legislature.

‘It’s wrong that fringe groups in these extreme contests can use our wildlife resources for money,’ said Brian Shapiro, New York state director of the Humane Society of the United States. ‘I can’t think of any other natural resource that is used that way.’

Opponents want to put an end to annual events held around upstate New York that target wildlife like coyotes, rabbits, raccoons and foxes.Campaigns against the competitions often feature pictures of coyote carcasses in a pile or other grisly scenes.

But the proposed ban illustrates the cultural chasm between its supporters and those who see the contests as an unfairly demonized part of rural life.

‘When it comes to this stuff, it’s all about emotion. They throw logic out of the window,’ said David Leibig, a rural upstate resident and executive director of the New York State Trappers Association.

Leibig said the events draw families and raise money for fire departments and other community groups. He bristles at the charge that they’re ‘just a blood fest.’

These types of contests have been held for decades around the nation. Animal advocates were able to track 22 last year in New York, though there may be more. Shapiro believes only a ‘small minority’ of the roughly 580,000 people with New York hunting licenses participate in the contests.

Contests for coyotes or a wider range of wildlife already are prohibited in eight states, including California, Colorado and Arizona, according to the Humane Society. Massachusetts wildlife regulators noted public concerns, such as encouraging indiscriminate killing, when it prohibited hunting contests for certain predators and furbearers in 2019.

Oregon is expected to vote in September on a proposed ban.

New York’s proposed law would make it illegal to organize, conduct, promote or participate in competitions involving wildlife being taken for prizes or entertainment. People would still be able to hunt the animals, just not as part of those contests.

The measure would not apply to contests involving white-tailed deer, bear and turkey. Animal advocates say existing hunting regulations, which include bag limits, tend to protect those creatures.

Assembly sponsor Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat, said her bill targets contests that are ‘gruesome and wasteful.’ Though many of the animals can be eaten and coyotes are valued for their pelts, opponents say animals killed during the contests too often are thrown in the trash.

One annual event that has drawn criticism — and hundreds of participants — is a three-day coyote hunt held in largely rural Sullivan County, northwest of New York City. Organizers offer a top prize of $2,000 for the hunter who brings in the heaviest coyote.

The competition raises as much as $12,000 to help fund youth programs and the local fire department, said John Van Etten, president of the Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs of Sullivan County.

He sees opposition to the competition as misguided.

‘I think the people that want to ban these contests don’t really understand them,’ Van Etten said.

‘They don’t understand hunting and why people would kill coyotes,’ he said. ‘Whether there’s a contest or not, they’re still going to do so.’

The contests also have been defended as a way to keep wildlife populations in check — especially for coyotes, which are viewed as livestock-killing nuisances in some areas.

Ban supporters say the best available evidence does not support casting the competitions as coyote control. Instead, the ban advocates claim contests can actually spur coyote reproduction by destabilizing packs.

Hochul, a Democrat, is reviewing the legislation, according to her office. The measure is among bills she’s considering whether to sign this year.

The legislation passed the Democrat-controlled Legislature in June, over Republican arguments that it represented an attack by urban interests on a rural practice.

‘This anti-hunting bill is yet another example of out-of-touch, big city legislators imposing their will on our constituents,’ Republican Assembly Member Steve Hawley said in a press release.

Proponents say the ban takes aim at wasteful contests, not all hunting. Wildlife regulators in other states have said the controversial contests could potentially undermine the public’s support for traditional hunting.

Shapiro disputes the rural vs. urban framing, pointing to supporters in rural areas, including hunters and farmers.

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President Biden is facing increased pressure to use his authority to either support legislation or unilaterally enact proposals that would advance efforts to give reparations to Black Americans as a way to make amends for slavery and racism.

The campaign for cities and states to pay reparations at a more local level is gaining major momentum as a growing number of communities across the country weigh payment proposals. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers at the federal level have introduced their own measures. Most recently, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., introduced a proposal in May to pay $14 trillion to compensate for what she believes are racist government policies that created a wealth gap between White and Black people. Less ambitiously, several Democrats in Congress have backed a bill establishing a commission to study and develop reparations proposals for lawmakers to consider implementing.

However, Biden has largely been silent about such initiatives, leading to frustration among pro-reparations activists and some Democrats in Congress — especially amid great energy at the state and local levels to advance such measures.

‘Activists have been pressing the Biden administration to use his executive authority to immediately establish a federal reparations commission given the deliberate stalling at the congressional level,’ Dreisen Heath, an expert and leading reparations activist, recently told Fox News Digital.

Racial justice groups and some Democrats have been pushing Biden for years to establish a national reparations commission by executive order — so far to no avail.

‘We ask with no apologies for an executive order to be in place,’ Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said in December. ‘I want for once an acceptance of the history, of the journey that African Americans have taken, to be an accepted reality in America.’

Months later, the National Council of Churches USA, Faith for Black Lives, and more than 200 faith leaders from across the country issued a letter to Biden calling on him to establish a reparations commission by executive order on or before the Juneteenth holiday on une 19, 2023.

Just days after the letter, civil rights leaders gathered outside a historic church in Selma, Alabama, to urge Biden to sign an executive order to study reparations for Black Americans.

Descendants of slaves have also slammed Biden for not acting on reparations.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story to clarify Biden’s position on reparations. However, the White House has previously indicated Biden, who’s largely been quiet about the issue, supports studying potential reparations for Black Americans but has stopped short of saying he’d back a bill introduced in Congress that would create such a commission.

Last month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly dodged a question concerning whether Biden would support financial reparations being paid to the descendants of Black slaves in the U.S.

In March, Jean-Pierre similarly failed to answer a question about whether Biden supports slavery reparations at a national level.

Pressure on Biden and the White House to act will likely mount as a growing number of localities add their names to the list of those actively pursuing reparations.

The latest example is Ann Arbor, home of the sprawling University of Michigan. Local outlet MLive.com obtained emails from city council members revealing they’ve been considering reparations for several months.

‘As I previously shared with you, one of my main priorities on council has been to start a task force to help the city identify how we can pay reparations to our Black community,’ one council member wrote in a Jan. 23 email to a University of Michigan social work professor.

In Georgia, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted last week in favor of $210,000 in funding toward a reparations study to discern if reparations are necessary for some Fulton County residents who are descended from slaves.

And in New York City, the Department of Health is reportedly pushing reparations as an answer to racial and wealth inequities among New Yorkers.

Beyond New York City, the state legislature in New York passed a bill last month that would create a commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination in the Empire State and make recommendations for potential reparations, such as restitution payments from the government. The commission’s recommendations would be non-binding, meaning the legislature would decide whether to take them up for a vote.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is reportedly reviewing the bill but hasn’t commented publicly on the legislation, which needs her signature to become law. If Hochul signs the bill, New York would be the second state to establish a reparations commission, following California’s lead.

Late last month, California’s reparations ask force, which has been examining the possibility of implementing statewide reparations, released its final recommendations for the state legislature to consider and potentially send to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

In its approximately 1,000-page report, the task force proposed dozens of statewide policies and ways to calculate monetary reparations designed to redress slavery and historical injustices against Black Americans. According to the task force, such history has created lingering consequences that exist today in the form of systemic racism.

Critics counter that reparations proposals are fiscally unmanageable and don’t make sense by having people who never owned slaves pay money to others who never were slaves as way to atone for slavery.

Still, the task force estimated the minimum dollar amount in harm that California has caused or could have prevented totals at least $1 million per eligible Black Californian.

Beyond cash payments, the task force recommended a variety of other reparations proposals, such as ending the prosecution of low-level crimes and mandating ‘anti-bias training’ as a graduate requirement for medical school, among other measures.

While New York and California are the only states actively pursuing a comprehensive statewide reparations plan, several areas across the country may follow suit at the local level — and at least one city has already begun implementing reparations.

The Chicago suburb of Evanston in 2019 committed to spend $10 million over 10 years on local reparations. Two years later, it became the first U.S. city of any size to fund reparations, specifically $25,000 for qualifying Black residents for home repairs, property down payments and interest or late penalties due on city property.

Now, Evanston has become the first city to actually start paying reparations. City staff have met with 48 recipients who are each eligible for the $25,000, and 16 of them received payments this week, according to the Evanston RoundTable. The city expects to dole out the reparations to 140 mostly elderly residents by the end of this year out of about 75,000 total, officials told the Wall Street Journal.

Evanston is the first city of any kind to deliver on reparations, but San Francisco could be the first major U.S. city to fund such a policy as its own local commission explores potentially doling out millions of dollars each to qualifying Black residents.

Beyond San Francisco, some California cities — such as Oakland, Los Angeles and Sacramento — have been pushing their own reparations initiatives even as the state advances its own payment plan.

In Maryland, meanwhile, legislation to create a state reparations commission has died twice in the General Assembly in the past two years. However, Greenbelt in 2021 became the first city in Maryland to vote for setting up a commission that will study paying reparations. Baltimore did the same in May.

Last week, the Caucus of African American Leaders voted unanimously to present a reparations resolution to Maryland officials, seeking programs to address the effects of slavery among Black residents. The resolution will reportedly be presented soon to Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley, and then to Gov. Wes Moore and Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman in August.

Elsewhere on the East Coast, Asheville, North Carolina, and Providence, Rhode Island, have each committed millions of dollars to their own local reparations programs.

Regarding Asheville specifically, commissioners in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, are now preparing to conduct a ‘harm audit’ for county policies and procedures as a recommendation from the Community Reparations Commission, according to local TV station WLOS. The goal of the audit is to examine policies and practices that harm the Black community, with the county and the city of Asheville splitting the cost of the contract.

As for reparations at the federal level, they appear stalled amid widespread Republican opposition, only partial support among Democrat lawmakers, and an unclear level of support from the president.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills on Wednesday vetoed a bill aimed at prohibiting foreign influence in Maine elections, but voters will get the final say if the veto is sustained by lawmakers next week.

Mills said in a statement that she had concerns about the constitutionality of the bill and feared the language was so broad it could silence ‘legitimate voices, including Maine-based businesses.’ Mills vetoed a similar foreign electioneering ban in 2021.

The current bill was introduced after Quebec-owned Hydro-Quebec spent millions fighting a referendum in which voters rebuked a $1 billion transmission line project aimed at bringing the Canadian company’s hydropower to the New England power grid.

State law bans foreign nationals and companies from donating to candidates, but there is a loophole when it comes to referendums.

In her veto letter, the governor said she supports taking a stand against ‘dark money’ that influences elections, but she said the bill creates ‘a bureaucratic morass that will entrap and silence otherwise legitimate voices and undermine the fundamental American cornerstones of free speech and free press.’

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An extensive reorganization of Iowa’s state government to streamline services is complete and already translating into improvements after just three months, Gov. Kim Reynolds said, even as some continue to worry that the massive transition consolidates the governor’s power and diminishes accountability.

Reynolds proposed the alignment as one of her top priorities at the beginning of the year, envisioning the shrinking of departments from 37 to 16 and the elimination of more than 500 positions. She signed the bill into law on April 4 after it passed in the Legislature without any substantive changes.

The 16 beefed-up agencies are now fully operational, Reynolds said, and already seeing ‘measurable outcomes.’

‘I think it’s sometimes difficult to grasp the size and scope of this undertaking, especially with such an aggressive timeline,’ Reynolds said Tuesday. ‘The most compelling reasons why alignment is the right thing to do for Iowans are the early success stories that we’re hearing across state government.’

Reynolds also unveiled a new state logo with the tagline ‘Freedom to Flourish,’ which she said will bring all of the departments together under one unified brand and communicate ‘a motivating message that in Iowa, you can reach your potential.’

What are the Core Departments?

The administration touts the reorganization as an effort to eliminate redundancies across the agencies by allowing areas with commonalities to be housed under the same roof and be subject to consistent oversight, technologies and procedures.

In particular, the Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing has absorbed many of the licensing services that had been in other departments. The director, Larry Johnson, said Tuesday that they have already seen dramatic cuts in case backlogs and in the average response time to requests.

Johnson said they have a ‘leaner and more efficient’ process after they took ‘talented, passionate, hardworking public servants who were doing similarly situated work as their counterparts in other departments, put them together, questioned the process with the goal of improving our services.’

The Division of Labor, Division of Workers’ Compensation, and Civil Rights Commission have also been folded into Johnson’s department.

The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services both ballooned in size and scope as well.

Each department has their own director to oversee all operations within the new agency’s scope. That director is appointed by the governor and serves at her pleasure, the new law specifies.

What are the Benefits?

The state said the reorganization is projected to save more than $200 million over the next four years, largely by eliminating the roughly 500 positions that had been unfilled.

Kelly Garcia, the director of health and human services, said divisions were doing overlapping work for years before the consolidation.

They ‘were duplicative or disparate, they were disjointed,’ Garcia said. ‘I saw Iowans getting stuck in our system, getting shuffled around and sometimes really poor outcomes.’

Reynolds and her department heads also pointed agencies as a ‘one-stop shop’ for services, where before Iowans might have had to visit multiple agencies for one issue.

What are the Concerns?

Democratic lawmakers expressed concern that a smaller number of political appointees now have greater power, with more breadth and depth to their agencies.

‘There isn’t a person in this room who doesn’t want a responsive, streamlined government,’ said state Sen. Pam Jochum, who is now the leader of the Democratic caucus, during debate. ‘In my humble opinion, what we are putting at risk is oversight and accountability. What I believe is happening is a government that will be less responsive to everyday Iowans.’

Some pointed out that critical human rights functions, like the civil rights commission and the departments devoted to resources for blind and deaf Iowans, are now buried in other agencies, which could give their directors less authority to advocate for Iowans who need those services.

The director of the Department of Corrections, as compared with members of a localized board, now has authority over the operations that serve more than 30,000 individuals. Across the state, community and county leaders had questioned how effective the program will be when they lack control over their own services.

The law also gives the state’s attorney general more authority, specifying that departments cannot seek outside legal counsel and that the attorney general can prosecute any case on behalf of the state, even if a county attorney doesn’t request such an intervention. In particular, the law asserts that the attorney general alone should investigate allegations of election misconduct.

Who is Affected?

All Iowans are likely affected in some way by the state government reorganization, shifting where they go or who they contact for the services they need.

More than 2,600 state employees transitioned to a new department as part of the reorganization, Reynolds said Tuesday. She reported that the department heads have regularly communicated with employees to ensure a smooth transition, and many have had or will have the opportunity to advance and take on new responsibilities.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday that his administration is putting out new posters telling migrants to ‘consider another city’ and warning of high costs for housing, food and transportation in the Big Apple as it struggles to deal with its share of illegal immigrants.

‘We have no more room in the city,’ Adams stressed at a press conference, calling for economic support from the federal government and a ‘decompression strategy’ across the country.

Adams rolled out the posters, which outline how over 90,000 migrants have hit the city since April last year, and said, ‘There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.’ 

‘Housing in NYC is very expensive,’ the posters say.

‘The cost of food, transportation, and other necessities in NYC is the highest in the United States,’ it says.

‘Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.,’ said the city, which supporters of large-scale immigration have noted holds the Statue of Liberty.

As of July 16, the city says it has over 54,800 migrants in care, with 188 sites set up to accommodate them. There were more than 2,800 migrants entering NYC care last week alone. It’s a small number compared to the hundreds of thousands that hit the border each month, but it has left the city overwhelmed — with Adams having called for federal help for months. 

Adams said the flyers ‘honestly communicate our city’s situation to those thinking of coming here.’ He said the posters will be handed out on the border and put on social media.

‘This will help to reduce disinformation and is another effort we are making in the absence of federal action,’ he said.

Adams also announced that adult migrants will also be given 60 days notice to find alternative housing, accompanied by ‘intensive’ case management services.

New York City has been a main destination for many of the millions of migrants that have hit the southern border as part of the historic migrant crisis since 2001. 

That has been exacerbated by efforts by Texas to send migrants to ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, including NYC, as part of its own efforts to relieve the pressure on the border state. Adams and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have argued that it is right that so-called sanctuary cities bear the brunt of the migrant crisis that Republicans believe such jurisdictions have encouraged.

‘They attacked the previous administration’s efforts to try to have border security. And so that’s the policies they’re staking out,’ DeSantis said last month. ‘And then what? When they have to deal with some of the fruits of that, they all of a sudden become very, very upset about that?’

Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have feuded over the migrant transports. On Wednesday, Adams accused border states of carrying out a ‘funnel system’ to send migrants to cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Houston and Chicago.

‘This cannot continue, it is not sustainable and we are not going to pretend it is sustainable,’ he said.

The posters come as official Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics show that there were more than 144,000 migrant encounters at the border in June alone. That number is down from prior Junes and from May, and marks the lowest numbers since February 2021 — but numbers still remain high compared to pre-2021 numbers. 

North Carolina state Rep. Ben Moss won’t run for labor commissioner next year after all, saying on Wednesday that he’ll seek reelection to the General Assembly instead.

Moss, a Republican from Richmond County, announced his bid for commissioner last December. But he’s withdrawing, saying his time now ‘is best spent focusing on being present with my family and continuing my service’ to House district constituents. Moss is in his second two-year term in the House.

Announced candidates for commissioner include six-term state Rep. Jon Hardister, a Guilford County Republican and the majority whip, and Charlotte city council member and mayor pro-tem Braxton Winston, a Democrat.

Current GOP Commissioner Josh Dobson announced last year that he wouldn’t seek a second four-year term. Formal candidate filing begins this coming December, with any primaries scheduled for March 2024.

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Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders slammed left-wing activists for trying to cancel country music star Jason Aldean’s latest anti-crime music video, pointing out what she views as hypocrisy on public safety.

Aldean recently released a video for ‘Try That In a Small Town’ that included actual news clips of riots and looting in 2020. After activists claimed it was ‘racist and violent’ for Aldean to suggest lawlessness would not be tolerated in a small town, CMT pulled the music video from circulation.

‘The Left is now more concerned about @Jason_Aldean’s song calling out looters and criminals than they are about stopping looters and criminals,’ Sanders wrote Wednesday in a Twitter post.

Sanders said it represented Democrats’ ‘priorities’ for being outraged over Aldean’s lyrics while rising crime affects cities nationwide.

‘That tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of Democrats and woke companies like CMT that cave to the liberal mob,’ the Republican governor wrote on Twitter.

Sanders wasn’t the only politician to defend the singer. Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said the song was ‘sacrificed at the altar of censorship & cancellation.’

‘Jason Aldean writes a song defending the values that ALL Americans used to share — faith, family, hard work, patriotism — only to be immediately sacrificed at the altar of censorship & cancellation,’ Ramaswamy wrote. ‘These are the same people who cheer songs like ‘Cop Killer’ & the glorification of sex and violence in hip-hop. Stand strong against these hypocrites and opportunist frauds, @Jason_Aldean.’

Aldean hit back at critics, claiming that ‘these references are not only meritless, but dangerous.’

‘In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,’ Aldean posted on social media.

Aldean also clarified that ‘there is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage.’

Despite the backlash, Aldean’s hit reached No. 1 on iTunes on Wednesday.

Fox News’ Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.