An All-American Halftime Disaster
Jonah Turner | Feb. 17, 2026
Screenshot of the pre-show screen streamed by the Turning Point USA YouTube channel before their All American Halftime Show, performed on Sunday, Feb. 8. (Turning Point USA)
One’s morbid-curiosity with the Halftime-Show-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named is not unfounded– as you may have hoped, it was indeed a wretched, right-wing, rotten waste of time for millions of Americans who thought, “Well, how bad was it?”
It was bad.
This is, of course, an opinion. However, this opinion contains a foundation of decent morals, critical thinking, refusal to take things as they seem and a refutation of the claim that 3 million Americans actually watched the show live on YouTube during the Super Bowl.
To be clear, the Super Bowl has a history of alternative halftime shows. For Super Bowl XXIX (39), in 1995, local San Diego artists held an alternative show called "The 50th Super Bowl: A Celebration of Champions," which garnered attention. Another alternative in 2006 was the surge of independent artist performances on platforms like MySpace as a statement of detachment from the classic rock vibe the Rolling Stones brought to the Bowl that year. You’ve never heard about these because they have never been as controversial (and as diabolically disastrous).
The Video On-Demand (VOD) version of the All-American Halftime Show can be found on the YouTube channel of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a notorious right-wing organization of conservative pundits LARPing fascism to garner internet clicks and votes every November.
You don’t need to know where it can be found, however, as the show is broken down in this article in a more entertaining way than the 90-minute let-down accessible on the Internet.
The beginning sections of the show are merely a title card. The four performers of the evening (Brantley Gilbert, Gabby Barrett, Lee Brice and Kid Rock) are splayed across a red-lit background with the white title logo bearing the words “The All-American Halftime Show” worked across them (the American flag was also implemented into this logo, of course). Below the logo is a white text box saying “Event Starting Soon,” and across the very bottom of the card, a maroon scrolling text calling for people to “Wear the Mission” and text a number for merch, as well as encouraging that viewers “Don’t sit on the sidelines, text freedom to 71776 to get involved in the movement.” We stare at this screen, devoid of audio, for 11 minutes and 48 seconds– and then something actually happens.
Every couple of minutes, we are given commercials: a hiring-for-students hype-commercial narrated by Charlie Kirk (obviously, a dated commercial likely reused for events like this one); a fear-mongering Christian ad with a deep-accented British narrator calling for God to “Use us Lord, to make heaven crowded”; an ad for the online education accessible at Hillsdale College, alma mater of Charlie Kirk (the link provided, not Hillsdale’s official, of course, is one that routes users to a website that pushes three courses on the decline of Americanism and the true Biblical teachings).
There are several more interjections into the not-so-suspenseful countdown, but the final one, two minutes out from the end of the timer, takes the cake:
Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, jumpscares the show, holding a football and wearing a tie, sitting at his desk in his Pentagon office, with a federal message from the U.S. Department of Defense.
“From the War Department, we salute Turning Point USA,” Hegseth said. “...and every American who believes that freedom is worth defending.”
The Defense Secretary goes on to praise TPUSA’s clarity and leadership and thank them for “this halftime show that the War Department is proud to support.”
Really? The Department of “War” (Defense) weighing in on the ‘true’ halftime show is an alienating overstep of authority from the Federal government. Why misuse authority to show support for a show attempting to undermine the Super Bowl tradition?
Because the Super Bowl performance stars non-white Americans, of course (not even Americans, depending on what pundit shit-can you ask– looking at you, Tomi Lahren).
The music stops. The show opens with an electric guitar rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.
The show was held at a private venue in Atlanta, Ga. for an audience of around 200, and was pre-recorded. Throughout the show, the camera would pan down the runway stage, but avoided showing beyond the end of the stage. Around 100 people lined the runway on each side, and in several brief moments, the camera flashed beyond the edge of the stage, where, sadly (not), nary a soul stood.
Brantley Gilbert kicked off the performance with some hard (soft)-hitting country rock and rap. He marched up and down the stage with his mic decorated with brass knuckles and black-chain mic-stand. He sang “Real American” and “Dirt Road Anthem,” two catchy, yet beguiling tunes about the pride of the south and the times of old. Gilbert’s portion of the show was merely a Nashville country classic.
The lights go dark and awaken to reveal Gabby Barrett dressed in blue, a silver-bedazzled microphone in hand. Barrett’s two-song performance, “I Hope” and “Good Ones,” was more soulful than the previous two tracks, but no less country.
The third performance introduced Lee Brice with “Drinking Class,” which started mildly (as expected– a song about the blue-collar “drinking class”- yikes). He then paused his performance to make a statement, before continuing with a political bombshell buried within his song:
“Well, Charlie, he gave people microphones so they could say what’s on their mind,” Brice said. “Well, this is what’s on mine.”
Brice then debuted his new single “Country Nowadays,” a guitar-led white-man crybaby hissy-fit about how the world has begun to pressure him and his brethren (good-ole, white, country boys) for being inconsiderate baby-bigots. In his lyrics, he laments:
I just want to catch my fish, drive my truck, drink my beer /
And not wake up to all this stuff I don’t want to hear.
Just in case nobody has told Brice yet: No one's stopping you from drinking beer. Don’t buy matcha if you’d rather drink beer. No one's making you drink matcha.
Brice evidently thought this didn’t quite stress his privilege enough, as he continues his chorus similarly.
It ain’t each being country /
in this country nowadays.
The third strike? Accountability:
Be told if I tell my own daughter that little boys ain’t little girls /
I’d be up the creek in hot water in this cancel-your ass-world.
Oh, to live in a hot-water creek in the country. It’s the liberals– they’re filling the creeks with hot water.
Kid Rock began his segment with his rap-metal hit “Bawitdaba,” with the incessant lyrical line:
Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy.
Honestly, for a bunch of conservative cowards who wanted to enjoy the English lyrics of country/rock, they probably picked the least optimal artist to do so. Especially when I noticed he was lip-syncing the entire performance anyway– Kid Rock seemed to be enjoying dancing around in his bleached jorts and would consistently bring the mic to his face half a lyric late, though the audio would continue as normal. The magic of the pre-record strikes again. It’s a good thing he only messed up in front of an audience of 200. Bad Bunny would never.
An interluding cellist and violinist sibling duet took the Kid Rock segment for a turn. After the inspirational, emotional and expressive duo (the cellist appeared especially taken by the music), Kid Rock was re-introduced by his full name, Robert Richie, complete with an outfit and instrument change to perform his final song, “Til You Can’t,” a heart-wrencher about running out of time to be with your loved ones. It was terrifying to enjoy the messaging of the song and feel for the warnings, which can be paraphrased to ‘spend time with your loved ones before you lose the chance to forever.’
That is, until the facts are made clear– Ritchie is only covering the song, and added his own verse about only being able to love God and Jesus for as long as one has life. Well, it was looking mildly redeemable for a moment. Alas, the artist behind “My Oedipus Complex” and “My Oedipus Complex (Father)” has struck again.
As the song finishes, memorial images of Kirk, his wife Erika Kirk and their two young kids are displayed on screens throughout the venue, as well as the verse Isaiah 6:8: "Here am I, send me."
The production transitions to a pre-made video production about Kirk and TPUSA, before the show eventually (finally) concludes after 35 minutes. For contrast, I’d like to stress both the ending of the true Super Bowl (Bad Bunny) and the TPUSA show. Bad Bunny holds a football engraved with the phrase on the stadium jumbotron: “The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love.” Turning Point USA shows a title card that says “GET INVOLVED” and displays a QR code asking for money. A display of true colors.
Comparing the All-American Halftime Show to Bad Bunny’s is like watching the Super Bowl all over again. As much fun as it is to scorn, the only reason I’d suggest taking the time to visit the YouTube VOD is to sling another dislike on top of the 470k and counting. Don’t bother watching it, though; go listen to Bad Bunny– that’s how I’ve been coping after hearing Lee Brice sing for that many minutes consecutively.