The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
In the wake of Bad Bunny’s widely acclaimed performance at the Super Bowl, anger from Donald Trump and MAGA has only grown. Trump exploded in rage on Truth Social, and numerous MAGA figures denounced the show as a betrayal of America. This comes amid new signs that Trump is hemorrhaging support from his base, as one polling analyst showed in a remarkable CNN segment. We think these things are all connected. Trump-MAGA fury over a halftime show put on by Bad Bunny, a leading ICE critic, shows that MAGA is deeply out of touch with the American mainstream, and that’s visible in data showing Trump leading working-class support. We’re working through all this today with Adrian Carrasquillo, who covers immigration and Latino culture for The Bulwark. Adrian, great to have you on.
Adrian Carrasquillo: Thanks so much, Greg. It’s really an honor to be on with you.
Sargent: So let’s start with Trump and his base. Listen to this from CNN polling analyst, Harry Enten.
Harry Enten (voiceover): Well, Donald Trump’s base with non-college voters is absolutely collapsing. What are we talking about here? Well, why don’t we just take a look? Voters without a college degree on Donald Trump. Look at this. Back in 2024, he won those voters over Kamala Harris by 14 points. You come over to this side of the screen, what’s his net approval rating with them? He is underwater by nine points. That’s a 23-point switcheroo with his base of non-college voters, he is absolutely collapsing.
Sargent: So Harry’s using an average of polls there. And he finds that compared to Trump’s 2024 showing with noncollege voters, which is a proxy for working-class, he’s now swung 23 points and trails among them by nine.
Adrian, Trump’s coalition relies on the inroads he’s made with nonwhite working-class voters and also on overwhelming support with the white working class. You’ve written about the nonwhite working class. That coalition is really unraveling. Your thoughts on that?
Carrasquillo: Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, of course we understand why we’re here. We all saw what happened November 2024, and we understood the way that our politics reacted to that. On the other hand, what about this would be surprising, right? Like Trump is claiming now credit for this economy. Who feels good about this economy?
What I have found now when I, when I look at focus groups and when I talk to folks is that immigration is this really secondary powerful issue—you know, this sort of backstop and this hammer as a second issue—that’s like, Well, wait a second, we’ve seen construction workers say, I thought he was going to help the economy. That’s why I voted for him, because I need my job and I need my finances to to improve—oh wait, that’s not happening.
And then on top of that, he’s going for taxpayers and churchgoers and your kids’ soccer pals’ parents are being disappeared. So now people are just like, nothing that we signed up for do we want.
And look—and I know that you know this too—when people used to say that they were supportive of mass deportation and maybe, you know, numbers in a CBS News poll in the fall of 2024 were 53 or 54 percent, which weren’t huge numbers, but a lot of that was around the Biden border stuff, right? Like people were like, The border is porous; I have an issue with this. And we heard that repeatedly over and over again.
But people never knew what interior enforcement was really. We do this all the time. People did not know that what that meant—that you’re kicking open the door of people who live in these communities. Now that people have seen this and that it has gone not just from the Latino and the immigrant that maybe you have some empathy and compassion for, but literal people in your neighborhoods and U.S. citizens, it has opened the eyes to what this party is doing, what Trump is doing, what MAGA is doing.
And I’ll have Democrats and folks tell me like, This is not good for them for November. I mean, Stephen Miller must know this. Trump must know this. But there’s just this idea that I guess they’re just going to do as much as they can and then come with May and November.
Sargent: Right. It does look that way. Well, into this steps Bad Bunny, who puts on this halftime show that was all in Spanish. Bad Bunny has emerged as a major critic of ICE and an emblem of anti-ICE, pro-immigrant America. Really, before we get to the reaction from Trump and MAGA, can you just give us your thoughts on what you saw in that show and what it maybe meant to a lot of Americans as someone who really covers the intersection of Latino culture and U.S. politics?
Carrasquillo: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was—I was sort of tongue-in-cheek earlier telling my bosses that I think one of the things that I hate about covering politics and about this administration is that now everything is through a political lens. I really just wanted to enjoy that show. But all I could keep thinking—it kept seeping into my brain—MAGA’s going to hate this, they must be hating this. Not just Spanish, but then you just get into, like, all the parts of it that are so cultural and so specific.
I think for me, what stood out was that the Grammys was, like, very explicit: “Let me tell you my statement. Let me give you my statement.” And then you said you had a Super Bowl show that was more about his joy, about the dancing, about his culture—very specific about Puerto Rico and moments where the power is going out—and that calls back to power going out in Puerto Rico all the time and post–Hurricane Maria, how difficult the rehabilitation has been there, bringing the island back.
So, you know, I just thought that, you know, there was a moment where he did this wedding. And, like, we all have weddings in our culture, but the sort of waking up the little kid with the music that’s impossibly loud, and everybody’s dancing, and everybody’s all different ages, and they’re dancing—like, there was stuff that I think it just brought to me that he’s affirming humanity at a time when this administration is denying us our humanity. And so that in and of itself is powerful right there.
And you can’t deny that when he says “America,” we U.S.-centric think he means United States, then he lists all the countries in Latin America and he ends with the United States. He’s saying we are all America, and I think that also must get under the skin of the MAGA folks.
Sargent: I think in a way, if you, if you put it all together, what was on display there was a very non-MAGA way of looking at our country.
Carrasquillo: 100 percent a non-MAGA way of looking at the country, and I think that the messenger matters so much. We know this, but can I just bring back a little bit of trauma for folks? I don’t know if you guys remember Hillary Clinton in 2016 had “love trumps hate,” and that didn’t really work for her.
So why does Bad Bunny’s message—which is just very similar conceptually; he’s saying the only thing stronger than hate is love—work when it’s coming from this guy who’s Latino, who’s Puerto Rican, who is unabashedly, authentically himself? And I mean, this is his message, right? Like, that we need to be together. And that’s what he said during the Grammys. He said, “It’s not about hating them. It’s about loving our people and protecting our people.”
And that resonates so powerfully. I saw so many Black TikTok creators saying they couldn’t wait. They don’t know what he’s going to be saying. They don’t understand him, but they couldn’t wait to be enjoying the show. And again, that gets to that solidarity and that stuff that Democrats have in the past benefited from, and that I think they will again, probably November.
Sargent: Yeah. Well, Trump, as you can imagine, had already been raging about the decision to feature Bad Bunny in the halftime show. And then when he saw it, he absolutely erupted. I’m just going to read from his post:
“The Super Bowl halftime show is absolutely terrible. It’s an affront to the greatness of America. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying. And the dancing is disgusting. It’s just a slap in the face to our country. It will get great reviews from the fake news media because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the real world.”
Adrian, this is someone who’s absolutely convinced that most Americans are going to see the show as somehow an insult to the country. It’s kind of funny because he accuses others of not having a clue about what’s going on in the real world, but he’s plainly out of touch with how most Americans will receive this thing, don’t you think?
Carrasquillo: He’s 100 percent out of touch. And I mean, it reminds me of when I wrote about the shooting of Renee Good and why she was dangerous—because she was a blonde white woman who was standing up for her neighbors and for immigrants.
And there was a killing of a man in Chicago named Silverio in the fall, in September, who was dropping off his kid at daycare—who’s three years old. And a couple minutes later, they box him in; he gets scared, he tries to get out of there, and they kill the guy. And that did not get as much attention.
But this white woman, a U.S. citizen—we all saw this horrific video that did get attention. And that, I think, pisses them off and worries them almost as much as anything, which is people sort of saying, “Hey, why are you doing that to my neighbor? Hey, I go to church with this person.” And I think that that’s what is so annoying and frustrating to them.
Sargent: Don’t you think that to most Americans, they’re going to just see this as a sort of celebration of diversity and a celebration of immigration? I think that’s how most Americans will receive this show. And to MAGA and Trump, that very idea—the idea of celebrating diversity, the idea of celebrating immigration as a positive good for the country—is itself a bridge too far. It’s repellent to them.
Carrasquillo: Absolutely, it’s repellent. Everything with them is zero-sum. I mean, let’s look at Kendrick Lamar last year. I’m not a huge Kendrick fan—I’m not as big a rap fan these days as I used to be when I was younger—but I can appreciate it for what it is.
And I’m watching the show. I’m understanding that there’s people watching that really, really get every single little message and thing. And so that’s, I think, yesterday—like a lot of people watching yesterday do not speak Spanish, do not get all the specific Puerto Rican cultural references, but just from the show, just from the very people that are dancing, the sort—they know who Lady Gaga is; they know who Ricky Martin is from his time when he crossed over and came to the U.S.
So I think that just, like, that’s what the Super Bowl has always been about. I mean, that’s what the NFL understands now that Jay-Z is in charge of the halftime performance. It’s sort of like putting your arms around America and saying, “This is all us.” And then that’s what Bad Bunny had messaged on the football set, right? “This is America, all of us together.” And that has never been what MAGA has supported. They’ve always been like, “This 30 percent of America matters. And then everybody else—sort of screw yourself.”
Sargent: Exactly. Well, so MAGA, in fact, erupted over this show. Nick Adams, one of Trump’s picks as an ambassador, asked, “Was a single word of English spoken during the show?” Laura Loomer said, “Can’t even watch a Super Bowl anymore because immigrants have literally ruined everything.” And another MAGA influencer attacks Bad Bunny as a “fake American citizen performing who publicly hates America.” Well, there you have it, right? Like, to them, it is the very fact that immigrants were being celebrated that itself made it unbearable.
Carrasquillo: Yes. And of course there’s so much to break down there, which is, for example—is it Jake Paul or Logan Paul? I get them confused because they just matter so little to me, but it was Jake Paul. Jake Paul, who called Trump—who called Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen” who has benefited from Puerto Rico’s tax laws living there so he can keep his money, right? And AOC sort of eviscerated him over that on Twitter.
Yeah, I mean, it’s just—and then, of course, is Bad Bunny an immigrant? The answer is no, because he’s a Puerto Rican. He’s a U.S. citizen. So they just—it sort of pains me to discuss that part of it when, like, when people were trying to compare as if Kid Rock was on the same level as Bad Bunny, when Bad Bunny has 87.5 million Spotify listeners monthly and Kid Rock has five million.
Yeah, it really does follow everything that’s going on in our culture right now, which is you can feel that they know that they are losing grip and that they are losing the backing of the people.
Sargent: I just want to bring up one other quick thing about Laura Loomer, because it’s so funny. She actually tweeted at one point during the show, “Someone call in an ICE raid at the Super Bowl.”
Right? Now, what’s funny about that is that back in October, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem actually did say ICE would be all over the Super Bowl. So the plan was to have a big ICE presence at the Super Bowl, as if that was going to be something people thrilled to at the event. But then that was actually canceled and ICE didn’t do any significant enforcement at the show.
And we all know why that is. It’s because they would have almost certainly gotten a hostile reception. So to me, that really illustrates something pretty fundamental about how lost MAGA is here. Laura Loomer thinks that ICE would be welcome at this place, and MAGA thinks they own football. MAGA thinks the world of football is, like, their part of the culture. They own it.
Carrasquillo: As they lose the backing of Americans, all they have is the fear. And there’s a reason that those old, you know, comprehensive immigration reform coalitions were powerful: because they would have faith, they would have law enforcement, they would have business. And business interests are now saying, “Why the hell would we want ICE around the Super Bowl? Are you insane?”
You know, so, like, their entire story and narrative—their fantasy about the dangerous immigrant and the national, you know, emergency—we all know it’s BS because we’ve seen it for over a year now. But now all these institutions are finally—I don’t even know if they’re growing a spine, but they’re just realizing—this White House is a paper tiger. They’re just not as scary as they act.
Sargent: Well, let’s try to pull all this together. So you’ve got the nonwhite working class. The big story of the 2024 election was that Trump made the surprising inroads with nonwhite working people. And that was sort of—we were told—a death knell potentially for the Democratic Party. If they couldn’t figure out that the culture has been lurching to the right, including on immigration.
We were actually told that one of the reasons the nonwhite working class went for Trump in larger numbers than usual was because of his anti-immigrant message—that Democrats have to accept that there’s a sizable chunk of anti-immigrant people within the nonwhite working class. If Democrats are ever going to compete with the working class again, they have to embrace in some form an anti-immigrant, or at least somewhat restrictionist, politics.
Now we’re seeing that the nonwhite working class is deserting Trump. That whole set of myths around 2024 is in collapse, and the Super Bowl really underscores that perfectly. Can you talk about this big picture?
Carrasquillo: Yeah. It makes me think about if we go back to 2024 and that fall. We all knew—and afterward, when we saw the results of the election, we all knew—why that was problematic for Democrats, because they have in the past relied on these larger percentages and margins with Latino voters. So that’s certainly something they had to work on.
But I think what got lost there is these voters were not suddenly going to be Republicans forever. They were making a bet that in this particular election, they had some issues with, you know, Biden and the Democratic Party and Harris. But the things that they voted for have not come to pass.
The economy is a mess. We keep seeing—and all we are seeing—and I don’t think that voters generally care that much about our standing in the world and different things. They care about their pocketbook, number one. But all we’re seeing is that abroad we’re a joke and we’re not liked. And J.D. Vance is getting booed at the Olympics.
And then what’s happening domestically? Nothing that’s good for anybody. You know, there was that map the other day of the areas where there was blue support in the country—the big cities and these blue states—and then where the ICE activity has been. And we’ve been seeing Trump over the last year going into Democratic-led states and cities.
And so that to me tells a huge story there, which is that they are—they’re really in trouble with what’s going on with the community. And we see places like Minnesota, the way they’re fighting back so bravely, and it’s not just Black and brown people that are fighting back. It’s white people who are saying, “What the hell do you think you’re doing in our communities?”
Sargent: This has been pointed out before, but what annoyed Trump and MAGA so much about the Super Bowl is partly that white people were enjoying Latino culture, and that is not to be allowed.
Carrasquillo: Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. Sometimes when I see the way that he represents the culture and Latinos and stuff, sometimes it hits me kind of emotionally. Yesterday, I was just having a blast. I just had this, like, cheesy smile pasted on my face, and just thinking about how much MAGA was just hating every moment of this was particularly juicy.
Sargent: Yeah. And to just finish this off, right? Like, so the other big myth is also in collapse—the other big myth about 2024, which is that his election represented some sort of fundamental turn against immigrants within the culture, within the working class.
And that turns out to have been a huge over-reading of his win, which was, as you pointed out earlier, about the economy, about prices, and that sort of thing. And so we now see that he’s hemorrhaging nonwhite working-class support at the exact moment that he’s carrying out the restrictionist agenda.
Nobody wants this restrictionism. Nobody wants ICE. Nobody wants the paramilitary warfare against cities, and nobody wants mass deportations in the way he’s carrying them out. Can you sort of talk about how that myth has been blown up—this myth of an anti-immigrant turn in the culture?
Carrasquillo: Yeah, I don’t think it was an anti-immigrant turn. I think the economic anxiety, you know, that people had—and we saw this even from Latinos that voted for him, you know, through an economic lens. But I think that he also knows what’s coming and his administration knows the danger they’re in because look at the way that they’re trying to mess with the 2026 elections in particular states, trying to look into voting machines and irregularities and all those things.
Whatever Tulsi Gabbard is doing, which appears to be only focused on this sort of level of insanity—and I think it’s because they know that they’re going to get washed out in a big way in November.
Sargent: It’s sure looking like that, and I sure hope so. I think a lot of that will turn on what happens with these working-class voters, but it looks good right now. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Adrian Carrasquillo’s great newsletter, Huddled Masses, which is all about immigration and Latino culture. Adrian, great to have you on.
Carrasquillo: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.