MAGA Is Losing The Culture War

From Bad Bunny to Epstein to Elections, MAGA Is In Deep Trouble

This article is brought to you by GroundNews.


If you wanted a single weekend to serve as a high-definition biopsy of the rotting carcass of the MAGA era, its shrieking insecurities, its pathetic resentments, its festering hatreds, and that distinct, metallic tang of panic rising in the back of its throat behind the soft wattle, you couldn’t have scripted it better.

We may be in a moment of raging peril, with American liberty under constant assault by determined and evil men, but it’s good to remind ourselves that the evil men at the heart of this evil movement are not invulnerable. They are not politically, legally, emotionally, or otherwise bulletproof.

Fascism wants to scare you into silence, but sometimes, fascism trips on its own lies and absurdities and pratfalls onto its sneering face.

The cut hog squeals loudest, and my Lord was MAGA squealing over the last few days.

We are witnessing the slow-motion collapse of a grift, and God help me, the soundtrack is nothing but the wet, pathetic thwack of tiny hands hitting the “outrage” button as Trump speed-Truths his way to the Last Rally In The Sky.

First, let’s talk about redistricting. For a decade, the GOP treated gerrymandering not as a tactical necessity, but as a divine right. They sliced and diced the American electorate like a cheap cut of chuck, carving out districts that looked like Rorschach tests for the clinically insane.

They didn’t want voters; they wanted a captive audience. They bragged about it over steak dinners in D.C., calling it “REDMAP” and “hardball,” laughing while they turned accountability into a historical footnote.

(How do I know? For my sins, that’s how, but that’s another story for another day.)

But now? Oh, the weeping. The wailing. The gnashing of teeth.

The Texas dummymander assumed Hispanic voter behavior would look much like Trump’s 2024 performance in the demo. They were so, so wrong. Hispanic voters are now sending a signal to Trump and MAGA candidates that 2024 was a one-night stand, not a marriage.

I’m sure you join me in a delicious glass of ‘25 Chateau Schadenfreude as the same GOPers who cheered for Texas playing a crooked redistricting plan have discovered they’ve been hoisted on their own petard. Their performative agony over California and Virginia, saying, “Goose, meet gander,” while the Texas plan backfires on the GOP, is delicious.

The "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd has suddenly decamped to a fainting couch. The moment the Democrats in Sacramento and Richmond decided to play by the very "burn-it-all-down" rules Donald Trump demanded in Texas and North Carolina, using the same mid-decade surgical tools to excise GOP incumbents like a cancerous mole, the MAGA sphere erupted in a spasm of hypocritical garment-rending.

Partisan gerrymandering was strategic genius when it happened in Austin, but now that California's voters have legalized the counter-punch and Virginia is sharpening the bayonets, they’re suddenly clutching their pearls and reciting the League of Women Voters' handbook with the fervor of a deathbed conversion. Heaven forfend.

It’s not a principled stand for fair maps; it’s the panicked realization that when you spend years blowing up the guardrails of democracy, eventually the other side starts driving a tank.

It’s the ultimate tell: they know they can’t win a fair fight. They’ve spent so long leaning on the crutch of skewed maps that their electoral muscles have atrophied into nothing. This is an inevitable fragility in any one-party state, so Democrats, beware the same arrogance.

They aren’t mad about “fairness.” They’re terrified of even neutral maps because a neutral map is a death sentence for the collection of dunderheads, conspiracy theorists, failed used-car-salesman-types, and soon-to-be-arrested-for-pedophilia so-called youth pastors they’ve recruited to run based on loyalty to Trump and nothing more.

Then we move to the cultural front, where MAGA once again wandered into the 21st century and reacted like a Victorian grandmother seeing a bare ankle. This time, the villain of the week was Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl. If this was the culture war hill on which MAGA wished to die, die they did.

Imagine being so fragile, so spiritually hollow, that a global superstar performing in a language you refuse to learn feels like a personal assault. They want the Super Bowl to be a 1954 newsreel, all crew cuts, marching bands, and a vibe that screams “segregated country club.” Anything else, anything vibrant, global, or, God forbid, fun is labeled “woke” or “degenerate.”

Here’s the cold, hard truth for MAGA: Bad Bunny doesn’t know who you are, and he doesn’t care. The NFL doesn’t care. The advertisers definitely don’t care. You are shouting at a tide that went out three decades ago. You’re losing the culture because your “culture” is a stagnant pond of grievance, gas station boner pills, Lee Greenwood covers, of a be-jorted Kid Rock lip-syncing in a nearly-empty sound stage. The future is dancing past you in better clothes and with sexier music, and your only response is to scream into the void of Truth Social. It’s not a political stance; it’s a geriatric temper tantrum.

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The Bad Bunny Super Bowl show is the kind of issue that could easily get swamped in partisan media coverage that puts facts, well, second at best. I’ve found Ground News really helps cut through the static and chatter, and is a great way to test my assumptions and examine the quality and biases of the various media outlets. Their analytical tools let me examine the biases of the sources covering the story, the ownership of media outlets, and see the blind spots we all have in any media coverage.

Ground News took the huge Bad Bunny story and showed how it was covered, right, left, and center. This was a monster of a story, with Ground News reporting it was covered by over 450 news sources, most of them as straight news: 55% were center-leaning sources and coverage. It helped me understand right away that the right-wing media bubble could scream all they wanted, but the show was still a big cultural moment.

On the right, so much drama:

On the left? More joy than panic, and in my opinion, a better read of the cultural moment:

And in the center, the news:

Ground News is a website and an app I’ve come to rely on when it comes to making sense of the big, noisy news stories. Ground News lets me compare headlines, ownership, platform bias, and factuality in one place. In this story, it let me understand the big, cultural context of the Bad Bunny moment in the Super Bowl without the political bias that was cluttering up the airwaves and social media.

Subscribe to Ground News by using my exclusive link for 40% off their Vantage Plan…the same one I use. Just go to GroundNews.com/rick.

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Which brings us to the actual politics.

The special elections keep rolling in, and even the most stalwart of the MAGAe aren’t pretending there’s a red wave ahead.

The excuses are a masterclass in creative writing: it’s the deep state. It’s immigrants. It’s the phase of the moon.

Anything to avoid looking in the mirror and realizing that Donald Trump is the political equivalent of a lead life vest. He energizes the people who would already vote for him, but he increasingly sends everyone else, independents, women, Hispanics, chordates…running for the hills.

The MAGA brain-trust is now pre-spinning 2026 like a PR firm for a sinking cruise ship. The swagger is gone, replaced by a jittery, defensive crouch. They know the tariff game blew back. They know the “no wars” line rings hollow. They know the ICE murder squads are hated, and more so by the day. They know the corruption is a slow acid dissolving Trump’s already tattered reputation. His Retribution Tour was a dud. “Fake Election 2026” is going to take more than ICE to pull off.

The culture war is over, and MAGA lost; QED Bad Bunny and the NFL. They know the grievance act is wearing thin. But like a gambler who’s down a hundred grand at the craps table, they just keep doubling down on the same losing hand.

And finally, the one they really don’t want to talk about: the hideous shadow of the Epstein files, cast not only over Trump, but over his allies, aides, and cheerleaders.

For years, the MAGA cinematic universe thrived on the idea that Trump was a lone warrior fighting a cabal of elite predators. It was a nice story. It sold a lot of shirts for Mike Flynn types.

But as the names and photos keep trickling out, Trump’s cover-up not only of his own relationship with Epstein, but also those of rich and powerful men, is a growing political liability for the MAGA GOP, which is in full-blown cover-up mode. The vise is tightening around the enablers, the donors, and the hangers-on who thought their proximity to the throne gave them immunity from the truth.

You can’t shout “fake news!” at a deposition. You can’t meme your way out of a federal investigation. The mythology is cracking, and the panic in the Trump White House is palpable enough to track on radar.

Finally, and the less said about it the better, Trump’s own party finally found a line on Friday they wouldn’t cross. When Trump (and spare me the “but a staffer did it” garbage) posted a flamingly racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama, the GOP’s reaction was horror, not applause.

But the foundational rule of MAGA trolling is to never, ever, ever admit wrongdoing, never apologize, and never take a single step back. The troll community around Trump was desperate for him to hold the line, but when U.S. Senators and candidates for offices both high and low saw the racist images Trump posted, they pushed hard, and he backed down fast.

In their Discord and Telegram chats, the disappointment was palpable. The God Emperor Trump, owned and cucked by Americans of all parties, had his hand forced. He didn’t (and never will) apologize, but the retreat is sending a frisson through MAGA.

Put it all together, and what do you have?

• An arrogant, disconnected movement that can’t win without a thumb on the redistricting scale.

• A movement that is terrified of a pop star singing in Spanish to an audience of 130 million people.

• A movement with a working-class base watching the lavishly corrupt Trump overtly steal from the government till, and illegally enrich himself with bribes and payoffs.

• A movement that is hemorrhaging voters everywhere it matters.

• A movement haunted by its own sordid history, but stuck as the Party that Defends Pedophiles.

• Trump’s movement expects Trump’s party to be entirely subservient. This weekend, they weren’t.

MAGA was built on the idea that they were the “Silent Majority.” They aren’t silent, and they sure as hell aren’t the majority.

They are a shrinking, shrieking rump of the American experiment, clinging to the hope that if they just yell loud enough, the rest of us will stop moving forward. Their leaders and puppet masters are hoping that those of us on the pro-democracy, pro-constitution side of the political divide will panic and capitulate in advance.

It’s not working. The maps are changing, the music is playing, and the truth is coming for the bill.

So, by all means, you mewling MAGA choads, keep the waterworks coming. Pretend you own the country, the culture, and the future. Type in all caps. Cry until your mascara runs, J.D.

2026 is coming, and no amount of whining is going to save you from the reality you’ve built for yourselves.

Cry more, MAGA. It’s the only thing you have left.

Subscribe to Ground News by using my exclusive link for 40% off their Vantage Plan…the same one I use. Just go to GroundNews.com/rick.