• The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “The death penalty is pro-life.”
• After a Trump administration official suggested that ICE agents may be attending the Super Bowl following Bad Bunny being announced as the halftime entertainment, a Newsmax guest said, “I want to see ICE agents tackling performers and bringing them off the field. Send them to Uganda with Kilmar Abrego Garcia."

On Sunday, the National Football League announced that Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl halftime show in February. The announcement triggered a MAGA meltdown, with pundits across various media platforms freaking out over the choice. Here’s a small selection: 

• Benny Johnson: “NFL leadership has decided to hire a cross dressing, America-hating, ICE-hating Puerto Rican dude.” 
• Fox host Jimmy Failla: “We have a crossdresser who doesn’t speak English doing the halftime show.” 
• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty said, “Americans are going to be forced to listen to somebody whose songs are all in Spanish, someone who has also been a vocal critic of Donald Trump.” 
• Megyn Kelly asked a guest if Bad Bunny’s upcoming performance “an active middle finger to all of MAGA and the right-wing.” 

The torrent of criticism from the right is reminiscent of the attacks recently leveled against late night host Jimmy Kimmel. 

In full disclosure, despite the fact that Bad Bunny is an immensely popular artist, I had never heard his music before this week. But given his influence, when I learned about him after the NFL’s announcement, he seemed like a reasonable choice. So it was strange watching the torrent of outrage from MAGA pundits over his selection. It’s not weird for right-wing pundits to throw temper tantrums over the Super Bowl — or the halftime show specifically (here’s a modest selection). But the level of outrage this week seemed disproportionate.

Right-wing pundits’ attacks on Bad Bunny generally targeted the fact that he wears non-traditional clothes, or that he sings in Spanish, or that he’s been supportive of immigration rights, or who he is. I think this case is interesting because the attacks on him illustrate a larger point about where the MAGA mindset is right now. 

I’ve written in the past about how MAGA is dividing American citizens along the lines of who does and does not count as an American. On Tuesday, a Newsmax guest said, “There is nothing American about a Bad Bunny performance” (To be clear, as a Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny is an American citizen.) 

In their attacks on Bad Bunny, MAGA media are making it clear that someone who wears non-traditional clothes, speaks Spanish, and is critical of the Trump administration has no place in America — and neither do his fans.

• Right-wing media have long fueled narratives around crime and disorder in Portland, which fed into Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard to the city.

At 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, the federal government shut down for the first time since 2018. Right-wing media personalities have been claiming that Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown because the party seeks to give health care coverage to undocumented immigrants. In reality, Democrats are seeking to extend the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and to reverse cuts to federally funded health care that were passed in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill this summer. 

Policy disagreements aside, right-wing media pundits have been downplaying the possibility of a government shutdown since days before it actually happened. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said, “Let’s not pretend that the idea of a government shutdown isn’t somewhat alluring to most of us,” and Newsmax host Marc Lotter said, “People don’t care if they” shut the government down. With hours to go before federal funding expired, Fox’s Sean Hannity declared, “I don’t care if the government shuts down.” 

In the lead up to the shutdown, Donald Trump threatened to fire more federal workers if Congress didn’t pass a spending bill. The prospect of purging additional federal workers sparked excitement among MAGA media. On Newsmax, Azoria CEO James Fishback said, “Shut the government down. Lay them off, purge the government of these deep state bureaucrats." Podcaster Benny Johnson said, “Most workers in the federal government are nonessential. I think most of them could be replaced by an AI chatbot, frankly.” 

With no end in sight for the shutdown, MAGA media continue to cheer it on. War Room host Steve Bannon declared, “I’m a huge believer in these government shutdowns.” Ben Shapiro said, “It kind of feels like, you know, a government shutdown is mostly the stuff you need and kind of gets rid of a lot of the stuff you don’t.” Benny Johnson said, “There is a government shutdown right now, and we are cheering for that. We say yes.” 

MAGA media has gotten the shutdown it wanted. Now we’ll find out what they do with it.

• Fractures have emerged in right-wing media over reports that the Trump administration is considering a ban on gun ownership for transgender people. 
• Fox’s Jesse Watters: DEI “was a bigger threat than all of America’s enemies combined.” 
• Benny Johnson: “White rage is how you win a war. That's how America's always won wars, idiots.”

Last weekend, a right-wing conspiracy theory contending that hundreds of plainclothes FBI agents incited the January 6, 2021 rioters in a “Fedsurretion” spread to President Donald Trump in just 36 hours. In reality, the FBI agents present on January 6 were at the U.S. Capitol in response to the pro-Trump mob. 

Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem have spent years whitewashing the January 6 riot. Since the start of his second administration, that whitewashing has been adopted as government policy, with the president pardoning rioters and firing or demoting prosecutors and FBI agents who handled their cases. Given this dynamic, and Trump’s apparent willingness to spread any lie that bolsters his own narrative, false claims supporting the narrative of January 6 as an “inside job” can spread with alarming speed. 

Interestingly enough, FBI Director Kash Patel seemingly attempted to tamp down the spread of this latest iteration of January 6 conspiracy theories — yet was careful not to directly admit that Trump was wrong. The damage, though, was done. By Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson was repeating the conspiracy theory on CNN. 

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote a great piece detailing how the conspiracy theory was born and spread through social media platforms to reach the president.