Sargent: People should realize that Bad Bunny just got a whole lot of acclaim—and some criticism from the right—for strongly attacking ICE when he gave his Grammy acceptance speech. There’s a little nugget that I think is worth pulling up here for people to think about. It’s that a few months ago, back in October, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went out and kind of boasted that ICE was going to be “all over” the Super Bowl. And [she said] the only people who should show up at the Super Bowl are “patriots and people who love this country.”
Even just a few months ago, the amount of hubris about the culture and MAGA and its cultural dominance was really quite pronounced, to the point where they could really say, like: “You know, we don’t care if you hate ICE. We’re going to swarm them all over the Super Bowl.” And now that’s been quietly canceled. And you’re not going to see ICE at the Super Bowl because Trump and Kristi Noem cannot afford a moment where ICE is booed. I couldn’t guarantee that that would happen at the Super Bowl—I don’t really know—but it’s certainly likely, or at least possible, that they would receive a pretty hostile reception. And that’s not something Trump and MAGA and Noem can stand.
Shephard: Yeah. And I think just to sort of double down on that point—that when Trump came into office, the thing he loved the most was [prestige]. That’s why he took over the Kennedy Center, right? It’s why he went to the Super Bowl. He wanted to appear beloved, right? He wanted to go and be applauded everywhere. And I think he was truly excited about hosting the World Cup this summer and then the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, because they were going to reinforce this idea of his personal greatness, right? So it’s like their ridiculous Arc de Triomphe-times-80 that they’re putting up in D.C. And, you know, I think that that is all kind of crumbling around him right now. And it’s happened remarkably fast, right? It’s been a year, essentially, since the last Super Bowl when he was in this position. One of the things that gave them momentum as they were coming into office last year was the sense that they had kind of “conquered” the culture wars—that they had won this battle that they had been losing for half a century, and that all of this effort to take down Donald Trump for being a, you know, sort of bore and a racist had failed. And that, in fact, that meant that everyone here was more powerful and they could do whatever they wanted.
