Turning Point USA put on an alternative Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, drawing 6.1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube.
Broadcast at the same time Bad Bunny took the stage at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the show put on by TPUSA — a conservative activist group founded by Charlie Kirk — sure seemed like evidence that America’s culture war is deepening.
The two shows catered to increasingly diverging audiences, and both included overt and subtle political themes. Bad Bunny delivered his performance almost entirely in Spanish, described “America” by mentioning every country on the two continents and performed in front of a billboard reading “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” — the words he used during his Grammy Awards speech where he also said “ICE out.”
Meanwhile, TPUSA’s show started off with country singer Brantley Gilbert’s “Real American.”
While some described TPUSA’s show as “veering on jingoism and cringe,” thousands of others online posted that they enjoyed the “family friendly,” “pro-America” alternative.
Conservative political commentator Jack Posobiec opened TPUSA’s event and dedicated it to Kirk, the organization’s assassinated founder.
“This one’s for you, Charlie,” Posobiec said.
Then it kicked off with an electric guitar version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and Gilbert performed clad in a Louis Vuitton jacket and a “God, Family, Country” shirt.
On stage, Gilbert was joined by several other stocky, bearded men with tattoos. In earnest, he sang about the American flag, the state of Georgia and his father.
After Gilbert, country singer Gabby Barrett came on stage in a modest blue peplumed suit and sang “The Good Ones.”
Lee Brice was next. The 46-year-old country singer addressed a “blue collar crowd” with his 2014 hit “Drinking Class,” then took a moment to speak about Kirk.
“Charlie gave people microphones so they could say what was on their minds,” Brice said. “This is what’s on mine.”
Then he segued into his unreleased song, “Country Nowadays,” which referenced Kirk’s assassination last September at Utah Valley University and the chaos that followed it.
“The same kind of gun I hunt with just killed another man. The only thing mine ever shot was deer from my deer stand. I just want to cut my grass, feed my dog, wear my boots ... If I tell my daughter that little boys ain’t little girls, I’ll be up the creek in hot water, in this cancel-your-(expletive) world.
“It ain’t easy being country in this country nowadays.”
Brice’s song points to the feeling among working-class, rural populations that they are caricatured by the American media and entertainment industry as uncultured, overly Christian and out of touch.
As conservatives and liberals seemingly move further from each other politically, one demographic was signaling a digital exodus. At least that’s what seemed to happen during halftime of this year’s Super Bowl.
After Brice finished his segment, TPUSA unfurled a massive American flag, and Kid Rock (legally named Robert Ritchie) jumped on stage in jean shorts and a fur coat.
Though Ritchie released most of his music in the ‘90s and early 2000s, he’s managed to stay politically and culturally relevant. Last April, Ritchie brought talk show host Bill Maher and President Donald Trump together for an unlikely White House dinner. Around the same time, Ritchie appeared in the Oval Office in a flamboyant red, tasseled outfit, as the president signed an executive order related to ticket scalping.
With its musical lineup, TPUSA may have been trying to channel the Republican Party’s “big-tent energy” from the 2024 presidential election, because Ritchie’s fireworks, flames and lasers were abruptly interrupted by an unexpected violin-cello duet between a woman in a floor-length dress and man in a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-esque suit.
And just as suddenly as he left, Ritchie then reemerged on stage. He said he’d woken up one morning recently with Cody Johnson’s “Till You Can’t” stuck in his head, and “something or someone told me there still needed to be a verse added,” he said.
So Ritchie added this verse: “There’s a book sitting in your house somewhere that could use some dusting off. There’s a man who died for all your sins, hanging from the cross. You can give your life to Jesus, and he’ll give you a second chance till you can’t …”
As the show ended, TPUSA queued a compilation of videos of Kirk, his wife Erika and their two children. It quoted the Bible verse, Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I, send me.” Then it cut to a QR code to get involved with TPUSA.
It’s not clear how long TPUSA had been planning on broadcasting its own halftime show. Bad Bunny had been announced as the performer after Kirk’s assassination. And on Saturday, TPUSA posted a video of Kirk saying that the most televised event in the U.S. “should be a reflection of the virtue that hopefully you want society to embody.”
But what reflection of virtue does a country cast when entertainment enters the culture war?
Perhaps it looks something like the two 2026 Super Bowl performances.