If MAGA can pull off this brand resurgence there's hope for Bud Lite.
No...I take that back. There is no hope for Bud.
How MAGA Is Taking Back the Culture
In sports, entertainment and marketing, displays of conservatism are crowding out progressive postures
By Aaron Zitner and Meridith McGraw. WSJ
Jan. 18, 2025 9:00 pm ET
Across many facets of society—in sports, entertainment, the classroom and the workplace—there are signs that MAGA isn’t just retaking the White House. It is gaining a firmer foothold in the broader culture.
Instead of taking a knee to call for social justice, NFL players are doing the “Trump dance” in the end zone at football games. Mainstream entertainers, among them the country singer Carrie Underwood and the rapper Snoop Dogg, agreed to perform at events celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration, something music stars largely shunned eight years ago.
A new generation of Trump-friendly comedians and wellness influencers is populating YouTube and other social media, while a snippet of audio featuring Barron and Melania Trump has become one of the hottest online memes, with celebrities such as Paris Hilton and brands including Frontier Airlines using it in their TikTok and Instagram posts.
“Every time I walk on campus, I see a few MAGA hats. That’s definitely new,” said Carson Carpenter, 19, a senior at Arizona State University. Conservatism, he said, “has really become intertwined in our pop culture…. It’s really showing that conservatism is cool now.”
Off campus, Americans who once hid their support for Trump now wear it on their sleeves, or their hats. Trevor Traina, a tech entrepreneur and former ambassador in the first Trump administration who lives in San Francisco, said he felt the shift when he co-hosted a June fundraiser for Trump in the ritzy, liberal neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
Instead of the expected protests, Traina said, the event drew “more than 100 people in red MAGA hats walking around Pacific Heights. And, you know, in my life, we’ve never seen anything like that. Republicans in San Francisco used to walk around with Groucho Marx glasses and scarves over their heads, you know, scurrying in the shadows.”
To be sure, a number of values associated with liberals have become more popular in recent years. Same-sex marriage is widely accepted, though not universally, and more than half of states have liberalized marijuana laws. After the Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to abortion, Wall Street Journal-NORC polling found support for abortion access was at one of the highest levels on record since NORC began tracking the issue in the 1970s.
Yet, Gallup found an uptick in Americans calling themselves socially conservative, with the share reaching a 10-year high. Some 38% identified as conservative, and 29% as liberal.
Moreover, social conservatives are making gains in their long battle to reverse what they believe has been a liberal takeover of Hollywood, academia and the hiring and investment policies at big businesses.
Businesses are rolling back diversity efforts that gained urgency after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020 led to a focus on racial inequities. Universities are adapting to the Supreme Court’s ban on considering race in admissions, and programs designed to help minority students are under legal attack, facing claims that they discriminate based on race. In some Republican-led states, officials feel newly empowered to press for Christian-theme curricula in the classroom.
Conservatives have long complained that free speech was censored on social media. This month Meta Platforms announced the end of fact-checking and restrictions on certain types of speech across Facebook and Instagram.
Pixar, part of Disney, last year reportedly removed a transgender story line from the animated series “Win or Lose,” saying the company recognized that many parents prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms.
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“I think we are prevailing, and it’s glorious to see,’’ said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, referring to the retreat of diversity programs and an expanded role for religion in civic life. The group shepherded the Project 2025 effort through which conservatives pressed priorities for the Trump administration.
Trump’s inauguration on Monday will present a tableau of corporate chiefs eager to honor him, some of whom have started to unwind the climate-change and diversity-promotion policies that the MAGA movement has targeted. Some of these businesses have millions of customers and are skittish about taking political stances. An appearance with Trump signals comfort that he is broadly acceptable to the public.
Among the business leaders with prominent seats for Trump’s swearing-in are Apple’s Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai.
Coca-Cola, which markets to an especially broad consumer base, recently unveiled a commemorative Donald Trump Diet Coke bottle to mark the inauguration. While the company has made similar bottles for the prior five inaugurations, it couldn’t cite another time that its chief executive presented the bottle personally to the incoming president before this year.
The commemorative bottle, which isn’t for sale, is notable given that the company sharply criticized Trump over his immigration policy in 2017 and called the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol “an offense to the ideals of American democracy.’’
Many political analysts have said Americans are becoming more open to conservative ideas because of fatigue with a “cancel culture’’ that some found stifling and overly sensitive to gender and racial identity. The rise of social media is another important factor. By appearing on YouTube, Instagram or other platforms, content creators avoid the gatekeepers of legacy media and can build like-minded audiences.
Manu Anpalagan, 20, a Yale University junior, remembers the Ben Shapiro craze at his Buffalo, N.Y., high school when the conservative commentator’s debates with students, posted on YouTube, became a hit.
“Kids were just fascinated watching those clips of ‘Ben Shapiro Destroys Liberal Arguments,’” he said. Wellness influencers and popular comedians, such as Theo Von and the Nelk Boys, who have hosted Trump on their podcasts, also carry conservative messages now. “We’re seeing a far better integration of conservatism into people’s everyday lives,‘’ Anpalagan said.
As a Yale student, Anpalagan restarted the campus Republican club last year after it had been dormant. While MAGA hats are still a rare site at the generally liberal university, he said, evidence of a cultural shift was clear when 40 incoming freshmen showed up on club-outreach day to consider joining the Yale College Republicans.
Trump’s personal popularity has had an effect. The meandering nature of his speeches was welcomed by many supporters as a feature, not a flaw, in his campaign appearances. His joyfully awkward dance moves were widely copied. “If you don’t think Trump is funny and perceived as funny, it’s going to be hard to crack the puzzle” of how Democrats can better respond to him, said Liam Kerr, co-founder of WelcomePAC, which supports centrist Democrats.
Kevin O’Leary, the “Shark Tank” investor, said a postpandemic shift to direct-to-consumer marketing led some business owners, like him, to take note of social-media attention to Trump’s goofy dance moves and viral videos featuring Trump’s voice.
“Trump magically, by happenstance—and I don’t think intentionally—made himself hip,” O’Leary said.
The football field has also been a venue for the vibe shift. Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who knelt during the national anthem at games as a form of social-justice demonstration, went unsigned after the 2016 season.
Now, the face of NFL protest is the 49ers player Nick Bosa, who crashed a televised interview just before the November election to show off his MAGA hat.
Bosa was later fined for breaking league rules against on-field messaging. “It was well worth it,” he said.
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