Donald Trump is trying not to make a big deal of the fact that he won’t be attending Super Bowl LX when it kicks off on Sunday. The game, which is being held in Santa Clara, California, is just “too far away,” said the president, who regularly flies across the world on a taxpayer-funded plane that solely exists to take him wherever he wants, whenever he wants. In the same interview, though, Trump did indicate another possible reason why he wasn’t attending: the halftime show. It will feature performances from Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny and the Bay Area punk rock band Green Day—both of whom have been sharply critical of the president, his administration, and, particularly in the case of Bad Bunny, ICE.
“I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” Trump said.
It’s tempting to dwell on the delicious irony in Trump’s statement: There is no one in recent American history who has sown more hatred than the president. But it doesn’t matter. Trump wouldn’t be at the Super Bowl even if Kid Rock were performing alongside a host of country singers no one has heard of—which is, incidentally, the slate of the right-wing Turning Point USA’s “alternative” halftime show, which is sure to attract dozens of viewers. Trump isn’t going to the Super Bowl because he is, one year into his term, more unpopular than he’s been since the January 6 insurrection. He knows that when the cameras inevitably found him in his box, he would be mercilessly and loudly booed. Staying home and stewing—and posting incessant (and most likely racist) drivel on Truth Social—is preferable. It’s still humiliating, just less so.
Trump’s absence at Super Bowl LX, combined with TPUSA’s show, tells us where his second term is headed. A year ago, Trump had real cultural power, particularly in the sports world. He attended Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans and was applauded. Pro athletes celebrated goals and touchdowns by breaking out the “Trump dance.” There was wide concern that the right had achieved massive cultural power through influencers, popular YouTube shows, and comics. Now Trump is staying home, and the best counterprogramming his allies can come up with is a performance by one of the most talentless performers American culture has produced in the last quarter-century.
The rise of the “Trump dance”—seen everywhere from college football stadiums to international soccer—was, as I argued shortly after the election, a sign of the wider cultural normalization of Trump and the utter failure to make him societally radioactive. It also pointed to one of the more disturbing trends revealed by the 2024 election: Trump had gained ground with a lot of people who, not so long ago, didn’t like him at all. Young men, in particular—not just white men without college degrees, but from a wide array of social, racial, and economic backgrounds—had warmed to the president. They thought he was funny, someone worth imitating—and saw no social cost for embracing him. And Trump was winning over these people in part because American culture—particularly online culture, but sports as well—had gotten more right-wing and reactionary.
TPUSA’s show is amusing for a lot of reasons. One is that Kid Rock is terrible, not just musically but lyrically; his songs celebrating statutory rape have gone viral recently. “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see / Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory),” Kid Rock rapped on the soundtrack to the 2001 children’s movie Osmosis Jones. Kid Rock was a cultural force of sorts in 2001, but in 2026 he’s been a has-been for two decades. For the past decade, he’s been clinging to MAGA out of desperation to maintain some semblance of cultural relevance. And TPUSA, a nominally Christian organization, is happy to embrace a man who celebrates statutory rape because he’s a vocally pro-Trump artist and there just aren’t that many of those right now. TPUSA needs Kid Rock as much as, if not more than, he needs them. (Who was their backup option—Lee Greenwood?)
This is a familiar, lowly position for the right, which has spent most of the last half-century whining about how American popular culture is mean to conservatives. But what is surprising is that, a year ago, it seemed like that was finally changing. The right had made real progress, from podcasters (and comics) like Joe Rogan and Theo Von to comics (and podcasters) like Matt Rife and Tony Hinchcliffe, to the aforementioned athletes doing the Trump dance last fall and winter. Rogan recently called ICE the “gestapo,” and you don’t see the Trump dance very often anymore. Amon-Ra St. Brown, the Detroit Lions star receiver, apologized after doing it last fall during a game that Trump attended. Other than that, the two most recent examples of the Trump dance I’ve encountered both came from South American leaders: Javier Milei, Argentina’s extremely weird president, did it at a White House event last November. And Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro did it in January to mock the president, who responded by sending Delta Force to kidnap him days later.
Instead, what you’re seeing is a fierce backlash to Trump everywhere. There are anti-ICE protests at the Winter Olympics in Milan (agents have been sent there to protect U.S. officials). Athletes and sports teams in Minnesota decried ICE’s presence in their state last month. Bad Bunny criticized ICE last week at the Grammys, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—who no one has ever called “woke” with a straight face—defended him for it. Even fans of All Elite Wrestling—admittedly a somewhat woker pro wrestling league than the WWE—chanted “Fuck ICE” at a recent match in Las Vegas. Trump is widely loathed. Supporting him, even by doing a silly dance, is reputationally suicidal.
The biggest story of the last year is that Trump has, in a very short amount of time, squandered most of his political capital by running a belligerent, unlawful, and fascist regime. But the second biggest is that the right has squandered all of the cultural capital his election brought them. A year ago, it seemed like the right was on the verge of total dominance throughout American society. Now they’re back to pretending to like Kid Rock, while everyone in the country gets to enjoy the real Super Bowl halftime show.
