Donald Trump's rant against the Super Bowl halftime show is more about pulling attention back to him than anything else, an analyst has claimed.
The president made his feelings on the show known with a Truth Social rant mocking performer Bad Bunny and the reception he received. Behavioral and confidence expert Shelly Dar told The Mirror US that Trump's response to the Super Bowl halftime show continues a familiar pattern for him.
She said, "Trump isn’t simply saying, ‘I didn’t like it.'" Instead, "he’s saying, ‘This does not belong.’ That’s an important shift. The language jumps very fast from personal taste to national injury — an affront, a slap in the face, something framed as dangerous for children.
"Preference is turned into danger so authority can step in. Once something is framed as a threat to values, to children, to the nation itself, it stops being subjective. It becomes something that needs to be controlled.
"It’s rigid, controlling, moralizing. He positions himself as the judge of what counts as American, acceptable, worthy. There’s no curiosity about what the show was celebrating, no engagement with its cultural meaning. It’s simply dismissed."
In his post, Trump ranted that "nobody understands a word" of the performance and that it was one of the "worst ever" performances the Super Bowl had ever hosted.
Dar believes this is projection from Trump rather than fact. She said, "That comment isn’t really about comprehension, it's more of an exclusion signal. It redraws who America is for, and then claims to speak for everyone. That’s not a critique. That’s boundary policing. It’s saying — this culture, this language, these people are outside the definition of ‘us.'
"He pre-emptively discredits any opposing response. This isn’t about taste, it's about who gets visibility. Who defines culture. And who decides what America is allowed to look like."