Bulwark Takes - MAGA Nerds Lose Their Minds After Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show!

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Tim Miller recaps MAGA's reaction to Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar's halftime show, whining about DEI and "wokeness" in music, sports, and commercials.

Hey, y'all. Yesterday, right here in New Orleans, Kendrick Lamar was big stepping at the Super Bowl halftime show. The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time, but the wrong guy. And you won't be surprised. You won't be surprised. The conservatives, the MAGA world, they just want to take our joy away. You know, there used to be this complaint back in the day from the MAGA right that I was actually kind of sympathetic to, which was that ESPN and, you know, sort of things from the cultural left were injecting too much politics into sports and that we should, you know, people should be able to watch the games. You know, obviously, certain times political moments overtake sports are certain appropriate opportunities to weigh in on politics during sports. But, like, it was getting a little overkill. There's too much. And people like Clay Travis, these, you know, kind of right-wing, used to be kind of phony, really, but, like, pretend MAGA sports commentators who just talk about this stuff for the clicks.

You know, that was their initial take, right? It was that, like, you know, let's dial it back a little bit. Let's let sports be sports. Well, that started to happen. And now we have totally come all the way around the bend to the point where it's the MAGA right that is obsessed with putting politics into everything, injecting politics into sports to such a degree that we can't just sit and enjoy what is happening on the field without having to get lectured about what is woke and what is too woke and what is too DEI and what is blah, blah, blah. Why don't we just have God-fearing Americans anymore?

And this was particularly stark in their response to the Kendrick Lamar performance, which was too DEI for them, too many black people. So I want to read you through some of the worst hits of the mega folks response to kendrick's halftime show actually before i do that i just want to give you my take i love kendrick i thought the halftime show was like a b and by the way there are things in life that are allowed to be b's you know not everything has to be the baddest ever or the worst i know that is anathema to our social media culture i thought it culture. I thought it wasn't as good as Rihanna for me or Beyonce for that matter. It was better than some of the other

ones we've seen lately. It's maybe on the Usher level. You know, I thought it was pretty good. Serena, you know, doing the crip walk. I really liked, you know, Drake getting owned. I really enjoyed. there are other things that i like some of the throwback to the original record it was just it was pretty good for me uh that is not an allowed opinion on the mega right uh here we go some of the worst hits from the folks that want you to know they don't like seeing so many black people on their tv here's clay travis the aforementioned clay travis this is the worst super bowl halftime performance of all time okay uh nike which has supported men pretending to be women, says women can't win because of sexism.

I guess this is complaining about a commercial. Then he attacks the Nike stock price. He attacks another commercial. This person can't just enjoy the football game, I guess. So anyway, worst performance of all time by Clay Travis, um, Eric Doherty, uh, who has kind of been gaining steam on the right. He's a Florida, uh, mega influencer, uh, raise your hand. If you survived the black nationalist Superbowl halftime show, uh, not exactly subtle.

Uh, we had Jack Posobiec, uh, Pizzagate Jack. Uh, he called it a DEI halftime show. This is like really one of those cases where DEI is just a stand-in for the N-word, I think, or for black. Because you say what you want about the halftime show. Kendrick is not a DEI appointee. I mean, he is the most acclaimed rapper in the world and has sold millions of millions of albums and is widely praised by people across you know music and demographic and ideological perspectives so like i don't know what the dei of this would be it would feel like it'd be dei if you put in the

group that jack wanted instead acdc that would be i guess australian dei because they haven't put out a good song in like 30 years but um anyway that was pizza gate jack you know ben shapiro attacked it uh he said he couldn't understand a word he was saying ben shapiro has a long history of saying hip-hop isn't music uh my buddy matt gates you know the good friend of the show matt gates here he goes the halftime show you just watched is clearly the regime's response to Trump's historic gains with black men. The community note points out that that Trump hadn't the election hadn't happened when Kendrick was announced. So another massive stretch. Lauren Boebert attacked it. Benny Johnson said, let's see, the halftime show should have been the village

people with president trump doing the trump dance uh read the room nfl he said we should no longer let talentless mumbling pagan satanic cultists do halftime shows and pretend people like it my podcast guest ben stiller my buddy ben stiller my new friend uh he thought it was the best halftime show. So I guess some people like it. Some people with actual artistic skills, unlike Benny Johnson, did enjoy it. So we got Bill Mitchell. You might remember Bill Mitchell from the first Trump term. He was a very prominent Trump advocate on social media.

That was awful in every possible way. Zero diversity. I love how they play this game. Like now we need diversity. Now we're're for dei when white people aren't involved uh zero diversity ugly costumes profane lyrics songs 99 of people never heard sorry bill it's just you that haven't heard them um many people have heard kendrick or songs just hasn't managed to pierce your bubble so uh i guess you know this was all extremely predictable this is all extremely predictable that in a black city like new orleans uh they would have a

halftime show that honors black culture that has the black hip-hop artist that is at the top of his game a black male artist is the number one um you know most acclaimed in the world right now that that would rub the world the wrong way uh but you know it's interesting the creative way it's worth looking at because it's interesting to see all the creative ways uh that they um talk about how they don't like black culture with trying in most cases trying to dance around being overtly racist but in some cases like jack posobiec just like going right through it. So we will, you know, continue to monitor what these assholes are saying. So, you know, I do think that the cultural, their attempt to rest cultural power, I talked about this with Ezra last weekend, is important. Shouldn't be ignored. Should be pushed back on. These people

are dorks. These people are dorks. And during the 2024 campaign, the Democrats kind of allowed themselves to be positioned as the dorks. And it's time to reframe it. All right. It is time to remind Americans who the biggest nerds are. And it's the people that have to clutch their pearls over the Kendrick Lamar halftime show because there aren't enough whites there. And so I think that is an important cultural ground for Democrats to fight on. So we will continue to monitor the MAGA dork beat so you don't have to. We'll see you all soon.