Can MAGA’s spite show outperform Bad Bunny? (Or at least the Puppy Bowl)?
The MAGA movement has always been partly about culture, but lately conservative politics have fully ventured into the entertainment realm. Between the theatrical release of the Melania documentary, the drastic and ongoing reshuffling of the offerings at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Kid Rock-headlined alternative to Bad Bunny’s upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, the cultural MAGA-verse has shifted from backlashes and boycotts to counterprogramming.
The anti-halftime spectacle will provide an interesting temperature check of the impact of these efforts. “The All‑American Halftime Show,” organized by Turning Point USA, is billed as an explicitly conservative counterprogram to the official Apple-sponsored show featuring Latin phenom Bad Bunny. Kid Rock will be joined by mid-level country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett. The show will be broadcast on Turning Point’s YouTube and social media accounts, as well as on several conservative networks such as OAN.
“He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool,” Kid Rock said in a press release. “We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”
A proud Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny is, of course, American, but he performs mostly in Spanish and has been openly critical of the Trump administration and ICE, making him a MAGA foe. So in a pop culture iteration of “alternative facts,” Turning Point and the MAGA-verse envision a world in which Kid Rock is a bigger attraction than the global superstar who was last year’s most-streamed artist on Spotify and just won the Grammy for best album on February 1. It seems delusional that Kid Rock can divert a significant audience from the year’s premier sports-cultural moment. What viewers it does gather will likely be motivated by anti-Bad Bunny spite.
“We can’t wait to watch the incredible show they’re about to put on,” Turning Point boasted of its counter-lineup. “We know millions around the country will be watching too.” (Last year’s Super Bowl audience was around 127 million people; Animal Planet’s halftime-show alternative, the Puppy Bowl, attracted about 12.8 million viewers.)
This counterprogramming strategy echoes a conservative tactic that long predates MAGA in the realm of information and persuasion. Rather than (or in addition to) complain about news sources they disagreed with, conservatives built their own alternatives, from Fox News and its newer, even more conservative rivals to popular radio talk shows and a slew of online media. No need to try to get your message through someone else’s media when you can just program your own content.
Something like that strategy seems to have worked for first lady Melania Trump, who doesn’t give a lot of interviews but is the subject of the documentary Melania, the contents of which she essentially controlled. Though lambasted by critics and mocked for a nationwide release on some 1,800 screens, the film did fairly well for a documentary, taking in $7 million on its opening weekend (experts predicted $5 million, skeptics close to $1 million). There’s still basically no chance it will earn back the $75 million Amazon paid to acquire and market the project, but all the jeering arguably brought Melania more attention and may well have motivated MAGA loyalists to head to the theater. Again, spite seems like a more significant motivator than enthusiasm.
Still, it’s not clear how well the cultural version of MAGA counterprogramming plays out over time. Consider the most prominent test case to date, the travails of the Kennedy Center, as cultural signpost.
Last year Trump seized control of the center’s agenda, reorganizing the board, installing loyalists, and naming himself chair. Artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Issa Rae canceled events, as did producers of a planned Hamilton run of performances. Evidently unfazed, Trump took an unusually active role in choosing recipients of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, including Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, and Kiss. Critics argued the choices had more to do with political loyalty than artistic merit.
But perhaps more to the point, the seemingly populist counterprogramming of a traditional Kennedy Center lineup did not play well in the cultural marketplace: Trump, who personally hosted the event, predicted it would pull the ceremony’s largest-ever broadcast audience, and instead it drew the smallest.
Regardless, Trump proceeded to add his name to the venue—inspiring more cancellations from performers—and more recently to announce the center would close for two years for improvements. One thing that reportedly needs refurbishing is the list of visiting performers: CNN quoted an insider saying that thanks to mounting cancellations and trouble lining up new performances, “there would not have been any programming to announce.”
So while we have to wait and see how the Turning Point halftime show plays out against Bad Bunny (and the Puppy Bowl), counterprogramming has become more than just a MAGA-friendly strategy. It’s apparently the only programming the MAGA-verse has to look forward to.