Kid Rock’s TPUSA Halftime Show Went Exactly as You’d Expect

Conservative America launched its own musical performance Sunday evening to compete with Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show—but their star performer, Kid Rock, couldn’t have been more of a dud.

The country music rapper opened his portion of Turning Point USA’s “All American Halftime Show” with his hit “Bawitdaba,” but within minutes, it was crystal clear that Rock’s blaring voice wasn’t coming from his mouth.

The musician’s lips were closed during some portions of his obviously prerecorded vocal performance but open during moments of silence on the mic, eliciting scorn from viewers online, who likened his vocal talent to famed fakers Ashlee Simpson and Millie Vanilli. Others claimed that Rock’s set was “worse” than one of Frankie Valli’s cashed-out 2024 performances, in which the “Sherry” singer hardly moved his mouth at all.

As Rock’s set ended, large screens surrounding the stage flashed a tribute, noting that the entirety of the show was in remembrance of Turning Point USA’s founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed in September.

But the country singer’s questionable performance barely mattered, considering that basically no one watched the far-right halftime alternative. While a whopping 128 million people tuned in to watch global superstar Bad Bunny rap in Spanish about culture, beauty, and unity, just four million clocked in for Turning Point’s divisive, initial airing of its 25-minute broadcast, reported The Independent.

Even the president—whose administration said he would watch it—couldn’t be bothered to tune in for TPUSA. Instead, Donald Trump was glued to the Puerto Rican singer’s performance, which aired on all screens during a Super Bowl party at his Mar-a-Lago golf club, according to clips taken by attendees of the event.

Trump eventually confirmed he had watched Bad Bunny’s set instead of Kid Rock’s, though the news came by way of a classic Trump rant on Truth Social, in which he complained that he doesn’t understand Spanish and claimed that the dancing—which included reggaeton, salsa, bomba, and merengue—was “disgusting.”

Eight survivors of deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein used a Super Bowl commercial to call out Attorney General Pam Bondi for her lack of transparency on the Epstein files.

“On November 19, 2025, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law. Three million files still have not been released,” the ad read in between headshots of different Epstein survivors, some with their mouths covered by the black “redacted” effect, implying that they’ve been silenced.

“After years of being kept apart, we’re standing together,” they said aloud, holding pictures of their younger selves. “Because this girl deserves the truth … because we all deserve the truth.

“Stand with us. Tell Attorney General Pam Bondi IT’S TIME FOR THE TRUTH,” the ad concluded.

This ad comes as Bondi’s Justice Department continues to feign ignorance regarding who or what is in the files, claiming that it has no information on the men who used Epstein’s network to abuse dozens of young women. It has also done a poor job of redacting the files thus far. In the latest drop, multiple photos of naked women (perhaps teenagers) appeared unredacted while a photo of Trump was blacked out. And as the survivors’ ad noted, there are still millions of files that Bondi has yet to release, for no good reason—leaving anyone who’s been paying attention to speculate about what exactly the DOJ may be trying to hide.

Jeffrey Epstein claimed that people were “concerned” that President Donald Trump was suffering from dementia as early as 2017.

In an email Epstein sent to author Michael Wolff on December 29, 2017, the alleged sex trafficker fretted that his old friend Trump wasn’t doing well.

“some at dinner with donald last night ,   were concerned about dementia.    tons of makeup.  did not recognize old friends,” Epstein wrote.

It’s not clear that Epstein was present at the dinner, but at the time, Trump was staying at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Springs, where he gave a wide-ranging impromptu interview to The New York Times that had immensely frustrated his staffers.

Less than a month later, Trump sat for his first presidential physical exam, and White House physician Ronny Jackson claimed he was in “excellent” health—and the president reportedly scored a 30/30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a common dementia screening.

But Epstein’s email offers a window into Trump’s inner circle, demonstrating just how clear the president’s cognitive decline has been to the people who know him best. Nine years later, Trump’s apparent instances of cognitive decline have only become more common—and more public.

Former White House attorney Ty Cobb recently said he believed the president’s “dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.”

In 2017, Trump’s iconic clementine complexion was startling to behold. Now, the president wears makeup to cover massive bruises that appear to migrate from one hand to another, and doctors have theorized that the president’s discolored hands could be a sign of something much worse.

It appears that President Trump didn’t even bother to tune into Turning Point USA’s alternative, anti-immigrant “All-American Halftime Show.”

Footage taken from inside Trump’s Super Bowl party at his Mar-a-Lago golf club showed the president and his invited guests watching Bad Bunny’s halftime show rather than TPUSA’s night of Jesus Christ, Kid Rock, and country music. 

“This just proves it’s all performative,” one X user wrote, calling out Trump’s hypocrisy in not even putting on TPUSA’s halftime show. “They stoke the outrage but couldn’t care less as long as the peasants are fighting.”

Trump later confirmed that he watched Bad Bunny instead of Kid Rock, in a classic long, angry Truth Social post Sunday evening. 

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” he wrote, apparently fuming. “There is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, 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.” 

But based on Trump’s own actions, it’s the MAGA sycophants who watched the TPUSA halftime show—when their own president didn’t bother—who don’t know what’s going on in the “real world.” A Grammy-winning artist, perhaps the most popular in the Western hemisphere, put on a sprawling, jubilant show and spoke in Spanish almost the entire time. Kid Rock just did some weird lip syncing.  

MAGA is fighting with itself over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.

President Trump crashed out almost immediately after, complaining about Bad Bunny’s singing in Spanish and calling it a “‘slap in the face’ to our Country” in an angry Truth Social post. This is despite the fact that the message on the football at the end of the Puerto Rican artist’s show was “Together we are America.”

But others on the right praised the message. Conservative influencer Emily Austin said, “Bad Bunny had the biggest stage in the world and could’ve made it political. He didn’t. He chose unity & love. You can celebrate different backgrounds and still love this country.”

A former press aide to Trump, Harrison Fields, criticized conservatives who called Bad Bunny anti-American, saying, “Last time I checked, my Puerto Rico–born grandmother was a full American citizen—and she voted for Trump.” Vivianca Rodriguez, who worked on the Trump campaign, said that Trump supporters who complained were “alienating [the] Puerto Rican conservative base.” Even Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, praised the “branding” of Bad Bunny’s show.

The right-wing discourse over the show also divided brothers Jake and Logan Paul. Jake, who called Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen,” was admonished by Logan, who said, “I love my brother but I don’t agree with this.”

“Puerto Ricans are Americans & I’m happy they were given the opportunity to showcase the talent that comes from the island,” Logan posted on X.

The MAGA right is probably going to fight over this instead of America’s actual issues. Some, like the president, can’t accept the fact that one of the world’s most popular stars speaks Spanish and is actually an American citizen born in a U.S. territory. Others recognize that Spanish speakers and Latinos vote too, and that most of the country didn’t switch to Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show. The question is which side will win the argument.

Nearly 137,000 Iowans stand to lose their access to the Affordable Care Act marketplace if Representative Zach Nunn has his way.

The Hawkeye State Republican has gone on a tear against the ACA, slandering the health insurance solution as a form of modern-day human bondage while broadcasting his intention to dismantle the popular national program.

Last week, Nunn told the Westside Conservative Club that he believed the “ACA keeps people in a position of permanent servitude.”

“Let me be very clear: I am not in favor of the ACA going forward. We have a bill that will immediately end it,” Nunn said. “The ACA is one of the most destructive health care plans out there.”

Nunn maintained a similar tone earlier in January, when he told the “America first” podcast Steak for Breakfast that the Obama-era solution was a “disaster” that had “enslaved” its beneficiaries.

“The Democrats’ plan has failed, but let’s talk holistically about fixing it for everybody, not just the few people that are on the Unaffordable Care Act and have become enslaved into that program,” Nunn told the show.

The Affordable Care Act’s marketplace has had an immense impact on the way that America approaches health insurance coverage. Roughly one in seven U.S. residents are enrolled in the marketplace, according data from the Treasury Department. A record 24 million Americans signed up for coverage through the ACA marketplace at the beginning of 2025, roughly double the number of people who enrolled just four years earlier amid the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Yet Republicans have fought tooth and nail to repeal and replace the program since it was signed into existence in 2010. Donald Trump originally campaigned on the issue in 2016, promising to end Obamacare, though he and his allies have not yet been completely successful.

In July, the conservative caucus slashed $1.1 trillion from the ACA’s appropriations via Trump’s “big, beautiful” law. 

Despite the needs of his constituents, Nunn voted for the deleterious funding package, and in doing so contributed to the closure of multiple health clinics in his state that partially relied on federal funding.

They included a MercyOne clinic in Ottumwa, which is expected to close at the end of February, the MercyOne Family Medicine clinic in Traer, and the Henry County Health Center-Wayland Clinic. 

Several other Iowa clinics have had to lay off their staff or drastically reduce critical services, such as birthing clinics. Some of the impacted sites include the Pella Regional Medical Clinic in Ottumwa, the Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center, and  MercyOne clinics in Des Moines and Mason City.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans across the country are still waiting for the Senate to pass an extension for the ACA’s premium tax credits, which assist individuals making upward of 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The premium credits expired at the end of December and have yet to be renewed.

Republicans suddenly seemed shocked that President Trump is capable of racism after he posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes Thursday night. 

On Friday morning, longest-serving Black Senator Tim Scott called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”—spurring other GOP senators and representatives to miraculously realize that Trump’s post was indeed racist. 

Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a swing district in New York, called out the president shortly thereafter, saying on X, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

After Trump took down the video, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, whose Pennsylvania district voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, posted, “Racism and hatred have no place in our country—ever. They divide our people and weaken the foundations of our democracy.

“Whether intentional or careless, this post is a grave failure of judgment and is absolutely unacceptable from anyone—most especially from the President of the United States. A clear and unequivocal apology is owed,” Fitzpatrick added. 

Representative Jeff Van Drew too waited until after Trump deleted the video and said, “I condemn racism in any form.”

“These types of videos are morally wrong. Sadly, this kind of behavior happens on both sides of the aisle, and it needs to stop,” Van Drew posted on X Friday afternoon, without mentioning Trump by name. “We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard.” 

Representative Mike Turner also waited until Trump deleted the video, posting that he “didn’t feel the need to respond to every inflammatory statement made by the White House. However, the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”

In the Senate, a few Republicans were willing to speak out.  

Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska posted, “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”

Roger Wicker of Mississippi called the video “totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”

Senator Susan Collins, who is facing a tough reelection campaign in Maine, piggybacked on Scott’s post, saying, “Tim is right. This was appalling.”

None of these posts demonstrate any real political courage, with most coming after the video was taken down. Trump has yet to comment on his post, and after his press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially tried to downplay the video, his staff later tried to claim one of them posted it without the president’s knowledge. The apology many of these members of Congress are supposedly demanding won’t come—not that any of these politicians were likely to hold Trump accountable anyway. 

The U.S. Marshals Service is defending a federal agent after a video of him violently kicking a small dog made waves on Friday morning.

The agent, part of the Memphis Safe Task Force that the Trump administration unleashed on the city last summer, can be seen in the video kicking the dog after it runs up barking at the agents’ K-9.

The dog is tiny, harmless, and really not doing anything to stop the agents from doing their jobs. Nevertheless, the U.S. Marshals played the victim.

“A woman at the apartment complex recorded the incident on her cell phone and posted the video to social media. While the appearance of the incident is unfortunate, the deputy marshal’s action was not done with malice,” they wrote in a statement. “It was a last-resort, split-second action taken by a law enforcement officer to control the environment and mitigate a dangerous situation. An uncontrolled, aggressive animal can hinder official duties and threaten safety.”

Under Donald Trump’s administration, the National Institutes of Health have slashed more than half a billion dollars in medical research on some of the leading causes of death in America.

A report published Friday by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, found that the NIH had gutted $561 million in funding for research on cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Despite research on these illnesses being fully funded by Congress, the Trump administration has chosen to terminate at least 320 grants mid-study and abandon thousands of patients across 304 clinical trials, including 69 trials for children. In addition to destroying years of work, the Trump administration’s actions have prompted an entire generation of medical researchers to question the viability of building a career in the United States.

So, how did the NIH decide what to cut? “The criteria for these decisions are not scientific. They are political,” the report stated.

Interviews with staff revealed that the NIH used a list of banned words to determine which research projects deserved extra scrutiny, including terms such as “COVID,” “climate change,” “diversity,” “disadvantaged backgrounds,” as well as multiple terms for Black men and women.

It’s worth breaking down what exactly losing that half a billion dollars detailed in the report has cost Americans.

The report found that the NIH has terminated or frozen 116 cancer research grants totaling $273 million. Included in that total was $20 million for the Duke Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Brain Cancer in North Carolina, where researchers investigated the leading cause of cancer deaths for children under 15.

The NIH has also terminated or frozen 65 Alzheimer’s research grants totaling $94 million, upending years-long research studies that were finally beginning to yield new drugs and diagnostic tools.

Additionally, the organization halted funding for 14 of the 35 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, totaling approximately $65 million. The agency also canceled meetings of the National Advisory Council on Aging, delaying the disbursement of an estimated $600 million in grants. After years of bipartisan investment, the Trump administration cut the number of new Alzheimer’s research projects by nearly one-third in a single year, according to the report.

Despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to “Make Americans Healthy Again” by flipping the food pyramid upside down, the NIH actively gutted research into diabetes by $83 million and heart disease by $111 million.

Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at an FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia, last week has led to some finger-pointing within the Trump administration.

On Thursday, President Trump was asked why Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was at the raid in which ballots from the 2020 election were seized. He responded by blaming Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying that Gabbard “took a lot of heat ... because she went in at Pam’s insistence ... and she looked at votes.”

“They say, ‘Why is she doing it?’” Trump said. “Because Pam wanted her to do it.”

On Friday at a press conference, Bondi failed to set the record straight when a reporter asked her about Trump’s assertion.

“DNI Gabbard was down in Atlanta last week for the Fulton County search. Originally, this office said that she was not part of the investigation. She put in a letter to Congress that President Trump directed her to do so, and then now President Trump yesterday said that it was at your insistence that she went down there. So what is the case here?” the reporter asked.

Bondi responded that she and Gabbard are “inseparable,” along with others who were at the press conference Friday (which included FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro).

“She was down there with Deputy Director Andrew Bailey of the FBI,” Bondi said, referring to Gabbard. “I’m not going to talk about any other details of that matter right now because Georgia is a very important issue to us. She was there, we’re inseparable, that’s all I’ll say.”

It looks like Bondi is trying to protect herself, avoid contradicting Trump, and cover for Gabbard at the same time. It’s very irregular for Gabbard, whose job is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence, to be involved in an investigation over supposed 2020 election fraud in Georgia (which was disproven in court long ago). Trump himself is unusually close to the investigation, discussing the Fulton County raid with Gabbard and FBI officials who were present. What is actually going on, and what is the end goal?