The Hilarious Decline of MAGA’s Brief Cultural Relevance
TPUSA’s show is amusing for a lot of reasons. One is that Kid Rock is terrible, not just musically but lyrically; his songs celebrating statutory rape have gone viral recently. “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see / Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory),” Kid Rock rapped on the soundtrack to the 2001 children’s movie Osmosis Jones. Kid Rock was a cultural force of sorts in 2001, but in 2026 he’s been a has-been for two decades. For the past decade, he’s been clinging to MAGA out of desperation to maintain some semblance of cultural relevance. And TPUSA, a nominally Christian organization, is happy to embrace a man who celebrates statutory rape because he’s a vocally pro-Trump artist and there just aren’t that many of those right now. TPUSA needs Kid Rock as much as, if not more than, he needs them. (Who was their backup option—Lee Greenwood?)
This is a familiar, lowly position for the right, which has spent most of the last half-century whining about how American popular culture is mean to conservatives. But what is surprising is that, a year ago, it seemed like that was finally changing. The right had made real progress, from podcasters (and comics) like Joe Rogan and Theo Von to comics (and podcasters) like Matt Rife and Tony Hinchcliffe, to the aforementioned athletes doing the Trump dance last fall and winter. Rogan recently called ICE the “gestapo,” and you don’t see the Trump dance very often anymore. Amon-Ra St. Brown, the Detroit Lions star receiver, apologized after doing it last fall during a game that Trump attended. Other than that, the two most recent examples of the Trump dance I’ve encountered both came from South American leaders: Javier Milei, Argentina’s extremely weird president, did it at a White House event last November. And Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro did it in January to mock the president, who responded by sending Delta Force to kidnap him days later.
Instead, what you’re seeing is a fierce backlash to Trump everywhere. There are anti-ICE protests at the Winter Olympics in Milan (agents have been sent there to protect U.S. officials). Athletes and sports teams in Minnesota decried ICE’s presence in their state last month. Bad Bunny criticized ICE last week at the Grammys, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—who no one has ever called “woke” with a straight face—defended him for it. Even fans of All Elite Wrestling—admittedly a somewhat woker pro wrestling league than the WWE—chanted “Fuck ICE” at a recent match in Las Vegas. Trump is widely loathed. Supporting him, even by doing a silly dance, is reputationally suicidal.
