Super Bowl exposes 'big MAGA weakness' as Trump sees pushback in unlikely space: columnist

The Super Bowl is exposing a major MAGA weakness, a columnist argued.

Greg Sargent wrote an article Sunday called, "Trump Rages at Bad Bunny—and Accidentally Exposes a Big MAGA Weakness," in which he argues, "MAGA’s hatred of the Super Bowl halftime performer reflects a hubris about what parts of the culture are 'theirs.' But those assumptions are proving more wrong every day."

Sargent referenced Trump calling Bad Bunny a "terrible choice," noting, "But something deeper is going on here than Trump’s usual lashing out at a critic. This clash hints at a genuine fear on Trump’s part that he’s on the defensive big time in the war over ICE—not just in the political war, not just in the war that’s shedding American blood in the streets, but also in the culture war. Because the battle over ICE has become a culture war all unto itself. And Trump is losing it."

He continued:

"The president has long regarded pro and college football—the players and fans, at least—as 'his' part of the culture. During his first term, it was commonplace for him or other MAGA personalities to share video of football stadiums in red America cheering him wildly. His propagandists hailed these spectacles as barometers of what 'Real America' believes. Just as Trump thinks that biker gangs, cops and coal miners naturally love him, he believes deep in his brainstem that all these tough guy players with forearm tattoos and their cheering, violence-relishing fans just have to be his people... In other words, this should be Trump’s cultural territory. Football has been an arena in which some of the biggest cultural battles of the Trump era have been fought—and Trump and MAGA seem to think it’s turf they should own exclusively. But it isn’t."

ICE going off the rails showed Trump he was wrong, according to Sargent.

"Now, however, ICE enforcement operations there have quietly been canceled. In the interim, of course, ICE murdered two Americans in Minneapolis and protests against ICE raids have exploded across the country. As The New Republic’s Alex Shephard points out, these events have supplanted the Trump-MAGA cultural moment of 2024. It’s absolutely plausible that a significant ICE operational presence would now face hostility at the Super Bowl—hardly a spectacle Trump and Noem relish," the article states. "Lurking behind all this Trump-NFL weirdness is a broader form of hubris. Trump and MAGA have long assumed that MAGA-adjacent parts of the culture will rally to ICE violence."

He added, "Yet large swaths of the culture—including typically MAGA-friendly ones—have now turned against all of this at a deep level."

Read the full post here.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) accused President Donald Trump on Sunday of openly trying to “buy” the silence of a key witness in Congress’ investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and all to protect his “Epstein island afterparty” administration.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator who’s currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, is slated to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, but her lawyers have made clear that she plans to remain silent.

Maxwell’s vow to remain silent, Stansbury argued, was a thinly veiled appeal to Trump for leniency on her sentence, and one that Trump’s past comments and actions suggest could succeed.

“I think it's very clear that she is seeking either commutation or a pardon of her sentence,” Stansbury told MS NOW’s “The Weekend” on Sunday.

“That's based on not only what she's done in the courts, but Trump made an off-handed comment yet again about giving her a pardon, and I think between the highly unusual transfer of her to Club Fed and him talking openly about pardoning her, it appears that he's buying her silence.”

The Trump administration continues to be rocked by the ongoing Congressional investigations into Epstein and his potential co-conspirators, as well as by the release of millions of Epstein files, which the Justice Department was to do after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Among the newly released Epstein files are emails and documents that shed fresh light on the ties many top Trump administration officials had to Epstein, a point Stansbury couldn’t help but also point out.

“Donald Trump is the number-one named individual, there's over three dozen of his associates [named in the files], including his wife [and] Howard Lutnick, [who] was apparently in business with Jeffrey Epstein,” Stansbury said.

“We know that Elon Musk was talking about going and partying on his island. I joked, but it's like the entire Trump administration is an Epstein island afterparty, so why is [Maxwell] remaining silent?”

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U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), known for being a fierce ally to President Donald Trump, was hit with an avalanche of evidence that he is wrong after "challenging anyone" to explain a Dem's statement about Trump hurting hospitals.

Lee took to social media over the weekend to share a video of U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, at a rally saying, "Trump was supposed to fight for the working class; instead, he's literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk."

Lee responded to that with a direct challenge.

"I challenge anyone making this absurd accusation to name one rural hospital or clinic Trump has closed—either 'to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk' or otherwise," Lee wrote on X. "No one can This is not a thing."

Except it is a thing, according to many political observers.

New York Times bestselling author Maddox replied, "Here you go, clown," and linked to a Fortune article called, ‘Is this kind of the first domino to fall?’ Trump’s Medicaid cuts shut down the only hospital for miles around in an elderly New England mountain town.

Photojournalist Steve Rhodes said, "Glenn Medical Center 'which for more than seven decades has treated residents of its small farm town about 75 miles north of Sacramento' closed in October because of a decision by the Trump administration."

Political influencer Maine chimed in with, "Sure. Here are three: • Glenn Medical Center (Willows, CA) • Stilwell Memorial (Stilwell, OK) • Northern Light Inland (Waterville, ME)."

Dem strategist Matt McDermott also weighed in.

"Despite Republican lies, the fact is that Trump cut taxes for the rich while gutting healthcare for working class Americans," he added Sunday while linking to numerous articles.

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Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid, made a remark Sunday that caught CNN’s Dana Bash so off guard that it instantly upended the otherwise friendly interview.

Oz was speaking to the Trump administration’s push for more transparency in health care costs before Bash asked him to comment on the nationwide surge in measles cases, with South Carolina reporting 920 cases of the respiratory virus on Friday, its highest numbers since the disease was declared eradicated more than three decades ago.

“Is this a consequence of the administration undermining support or advocacy for measles and other vaccines?” Bash asked Oz.

“I don't believe so,” he answered. “We've advocated for measles vaccines all along; [Health and Human Services] Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy's been at the very front of this.”

The notion that RFK Jr., among the most prominent promoters of vaccine misinformation, was at the “very front” of vaccine advocacy, left Bash taken aback.

“Oh, come on!” Bash uttered.

For years, RFK Jr. has floated debunked theories about vaccines, including that vaccine use can cause autism. The notion that RFK Jr. was “at the very front” of vaccine advocacy was challenged by Bash, who cited a recent social media post from Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group founded by RFK Jr. and run by him until 2023.

“Despite the media's scare tactics, there's no reason to fear measles,” the organization wrote in a social media post on X last week, a post that was flagged with X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking service for containing misinformation.

“Should people fear measles?” Bash bluntly asked Oz.

“Oh, for sure,” Oz conceded.

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