Turning Point USA is holding its own Super Bowl halftime show starring "Anything in English"

Possible musical options for the group's Bad Bunny counterprogramming also include "Americana" and "Worship," which sounds pretty kickass.

By William Hughes | October 9, 2025 | 9:34pm

We know it's not the most important takeaway here, but we can help wonder which is more distracting: The double lens flare, or the gigantic stretched-out bottom on the second L. Screenshot: Turning Point USA

TV News Super Bowl

Turning Point USA is holding its own Super Bowl halftime show starring

You may have noticed that the roving, attention-deficient eye of the American culture war has twitched its way over to a new topic lately: The Super Bowl, and specifically its halftime show. Various conservative officials and pundits—up to and including Donald Trump himself—have made it clear that they’re very angry that the NFL has selected Bad Bunny, one of the most successful musical artists on the planet, and also, it feels irritating to feel like we have to note, a born American citizen, to play the mid-game festivities next February. (Ostensibly because he sings in Spanish and has said he doesn’t want to tour in the States right now lest ICE target his fans.) Now Turning Point USA, the group co-founded by the recently murdered Charlie Kirk, has gone the full Bender on the topic: They’re going to have their own halftime show, with “Americana,” and “Worship,” and (hilariously) “Anything in English” potentially on the bill.

This is per Variety, reporting not just on the plans stated by the group—now being run by Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk—on social media, but a survey they put out, asking what music they should feature at their little Sad Puppies Bowl. (To be fair, they did include an entry for “Hip Hop.”) What is not clear, despite the very loud announcement, is where the “All American Halftime Show” will be held and, more importantly, broadcast: The American media has been pretty nice to Turning Point, relatively speaking, since Kirk’s murder, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anybody in the mainstream is going to team up with the group to try to counter-program the biggest TV event of the year in the service of broadcasting 30 minutes of hard-rocking hymns.

Most Popular

All of this is compounded by the fact that even the current intellectual stalwarts of the American right apparently know they probably shouldn’t say the quiet part too loud here about why they’re so mad that Bad Bunny has been picked for this gig. Instead, they’re just trying to ignore the fact that he is genuinely, extremely popular, and instead hold their own whole alternate version of the culture, one where music can literally be summed up as “Anything in English” with no further worries. For his part, Bad Bunny seems to be taking it in stride: He joked about the backlash during his hosting gig on Saturday Night Live last week, making a comment in Spanish about the contributions of Latinos to American culture before noting that English monolinguists unclear on what he said have “four months to learn.”