Turning Point’s Super Bowl alternative to Bad Bunny looks like a flop

The Super Bowl is a week and a half away, but the much-ballyhooed alternative halftime show being aired by Turning Point USA has not even announced a line-up yet. To hear the public relations folks at the right-wing fundraising powerhouse founded by the late Charlie Kirk tell it, this silence is by design. Despite insisting they have “multiple performers” lined up, the TPUSA spokesperson has refused to offer any of the allegedly enticing names they promised would draw millions of viewers away from the actual Super Bowl halftime show and decimate it in the ratings. Instead, the “All-American Halftime Show” is starting to smell an awful lot like a flop.

For those who have blessedly forgotten the furor from last fall, in late September the NFL announced that Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper, would headline the official program. To people whose brains haven’t been pickled by MAGA propaganda, this made sense. Bad Bunny is a true superstar, racking up streaming numbers rivaled only by Taylor Swift. The NFL is a money-making organization that wishes to build its brand with young people, so it makes sense that they want to snag the charming performer who mostly raps in Spanish.

MAGA’s endless outrage machine exploded, furious that someone they deemed “not an American” would get the most coveted, iconic gig in American sports. It’s hard to decide what was the stupidest assumption undergirding this racist freakout. Was it that they seemed unaware that native Puerto Ricans like Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Martínez Ocasio, are citizens by birth? Or that they seemed to believe there’s some secret “Americans-only” bylaw on halftime artists, despite recent performances by The Weekend (Canadian), Shakira (Colombian) and Coldplay (British)? Even MAGA pundits struggled to make sense of their own anger. Many tried to say it was because Bad Bunny doesn’t like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an opinion shared by 63% of American voters. 

TPUSA mistook the racist spleen-venting on X for a real trend and announced they would put on their own halftime show. “They forced the free hand of the market to create an alternative,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet announced in October. There was about a week of hype around this totally awesome, blow-your-socks-off MAGA music extravaganza, but since then there’s been, well, nothing.

For months, the website for the “All-American Halftime Show” did not change. There was only a survey asking people to vote for what genre of music they’d like to see, with options we’re apparently meant to believe will excite the youth, like “Anything in English” and “worship music.” But this week, TPUSA finally updated the site — not with a dramatic unveiling of a lineup, but with just a list of the media outlets streaming the program, such as One America News and the Daily Wire.

Instead of a list of performers, there are a series of traps to lure you into donating or signing up for TPUSA’s email list. One doesn’t need to be a marketing genius to suspect that this does not bode well for the quality of the upcoming show. Typically, when promoters seek to draw viewers into a televised music program, they will heavily advertise the big name stars they are featuring, believing correctly that people will be excited by stuff they like and tune in. This is why the NFL splashily announced Bad Bunny’s performance well ahead of time, and why commercials for the Grammys or MTV Video Music Awards mostly consist of a voiceover listing a bunch of names of artists with large fanbases.

Even the MAGA faithful were not feeling the hype. The mentions of the most recent X post promising the “All-American Halftime Show” were doubtful. “I plan to watch but you guys need to get on top of the marketing for this,” one fan complained, noting, “this is the 2nd ad I’ve seen for it.” Another griped that she hasn’t gotten TPUSA merchandise she ordered four months ago. 

“Please, please please put the halftime show on Fox. for a seniors it’s easier to get to,” begged another. 

“You better start marketing it on all social media platforms,” someone else advised. “I think you’re a little behind.”

To be fair, not everyone was skeptical. “We are going to watch, sounds like a great time,” one fan responded. “I don’t know what a bad bunny is but doesn’t sound good.”

These responses highlight the paradox that has always haunted TPUSA — a contradiction that has only grown worse since Charlie Kirk’s death. While founded and promoted as a “youth” organization, TPUSA has always been better at hustling elderly Republican donors for cash than appealing to members of Gen Z. Before he died, Kirk was able to paper over this dilemma with showy events where young people are in photos and videos that were used to impress the donor base and imply a conservative — and Christian — revival was in the offing.

But there’s no real evidence that Kirk was particularly successful in converting wayward youth to the MAGA cause. He had “leadership” events stocked with homeschoolers and college Republicans. He also held his infamous college “debates,” which were mostly intended to get clips of him arguing with progressive teenagers, who remained unpersuaded. At the time of his fatal shooting, 70% of college students said they disagreed with his views.

The promise of a TPUSA halftime show snookered many MAGA followers, though, who believe the organization’s false claims to have a connection to pop culture. This should have been evident after the memorial to Kirk, which had a large turnout but featured mostly worship music that has no appeal outside of evangelical audiences. But the hope that TPUSA is hip with the kids persists, resulting in a torrent of pitiful wishcasting from MAGA figures for a halftime show that people would watch for actual fun, rather than just to stick it to the liberals.

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The organization has seeded the rumor that Creed could headline the event. Others have longed for a Kid Rock show. Some have even hoped that since she’s reached the willingness-to-touch-Donald-Trump stage of her MAGA debasement, Nicki Minaj would perform. But it’s doubtful TPUSA would keep these performers under wraps if they’d snagged them. Even Christian music performers Cory Ashbury and Forrest Frank pointedly announced that they won’t be appearing.

Considering how much Minaj has humiliated herself already in her bizarre MAGA heel turn, one could imagine a scenario where she would agree to perform for the “All-American Halftime Show.” But I remain skeptical that will happen, largely due to the paradox of TPUSA’s funding model. Unlike Creed or Kid Rock, Minaj would legitimately attract younger viewers, though they would likely be more aging millennials than Gen Z. But her billing would come at the cost of alienating the actual audience for TPUSA content — the Fox News crowd. TPUSA depends on old, white, evangelical — and bigoted — people for their money. Those folks might enjoy the thrill of seeing Minaj photographed at MAGA events, but they would revolt if she took the stage to rap, “Let me play with his rifle / Put his a** to sleep / Now he calling me NyQuil.”

While this paradox is especially keen for TPUSA, it also defines the entire MAGA movement. They’re aggrieved because they feel excluded from pop culture — but they lack the cultural curiosity it would take to engage with what most people, especially young people, enjoy. This ugly truth is captured in their choice of a leader. Trump has announced that he’s not going to the Super Bowl this year. Sure enough, his reasons are whiny and out-of-touch. “I’m anti-them,” he complained when asked about Bad Bunny and Green Day, a band that has never been shy about its progressive politics and antipathy for a “redneck agenda.” (They will serve as the Super Bowl’s opener.) Trump’s answer suggests he can’t even name either musical act, forgetting who they are, even after directly hearing their names.

No one is saying, of course, that a 79-year-old man has any obligation to keep up with what the kids — or, when it comes Green Day, the forty-somethings — are into. But the problem with MAGA isn’t a lack of cool. It’s that they’re so mad about it.

MAGA is a movement based on the absurd notion that society is obliged to stay exactly how you remembered it when you were 12 years old, and that any social or cultural progress is a direct insult to you. Despite leaning old in years, it’s a coalition marked by an immature inability to accept a basic fact of life: that the kids today aren’t going to like the same stuff you enjoyed as a kid.

So yes, by outward-facing metrics, the TPUSA halftime show is looking to be a flop. From a more cynical perspective, it may end up working out just fine for Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika and the rest of TPUSA management. They were able to capitalize on MAGA’s tantrum over Bad Bunny to raise money and expand their fundraising lists. Whether or not anyone watches whatever feeble offering they have on the actual day of the game hardly matters now, though one person — yours truly — will certainly be tuning in to report on the atrocities. No doubt most of them are too busy scanning the horizon for the next right-wing outrage to exploit for financial gain.