Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders took her whole family to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this month — one of the most expensive sporting events of all time. And now the GOP darling is being cagey about how she managed to snag luxury VIP box seats and get exclusive access to some of the biggest stars at the game.
Talking Points Memo (TPM) did a deep dive to estimate how much Sanders' Super Bowl trip would have cost, when accounting for suite passes for herself, her husband, and her three children combined with other perks, like field-level access to Usher's halftime show and access to Chiefs star tight end (and Taylor Swift's boyfriend) Travis Kelce. Ken Solky — a highly regarded ticket broker in Las Vegas — estimated that the face value of tickets for a high-level box like the kind in which Sanders was seen partying on Instagram was in the neighborhood of $37,500 per person.
"It definitely looks like a suite," Solky told TPM when viewing the images Sanders posted. "[N]ot just a suite but a pretty damn good suite."
Each additional pass the Sanders family had to access special events came with a price tag of anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000 per person. TPM estimated that on the low end, Sanders' excursion cost more than $202,000. It's unlikely that she paid for the trip out of her own pocket, as that amount is far above her gubernatorial salary of $160,000, and more than her $165,000 annual salary as former President Donald Trump's White House press secretary. But whether she was gifted the passes or used taxpayer resources is still shrouded in mystery.
The Arkansas governor's 2023 ethics disclosure form — in which Arkansas public officials have to disclose any gift of more than $100 — didn't disclose that she received any six-figure gifts. And expenses relating to her travel and security are exempted from the state's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidelines, after Sanders convened a special legislative session last year specifically to change FOIA laws. That special session was notably convened in the wake of public reporting surrounding her office's purchase of a $19,000 lectern.
One big clue TPM found was a photo of Sanders in a VIP box with Tavia Hunt — a prominent GOP donor who is also the wife of Kansas City Chiefs co-owner Clark Hunt — which would been among the most expensive seats at Allegiant Stadium. Such gifts would necessitate reporting as it could be constituted as an out-of-state special interest attempting to curry favor with Arkansas' governor.
"If you’re in a luxury suite, it would be the highest face price ticket to the event," Graham Sloan, the director of the Arkansas Ethics Commission, told TPM.
Right-wing media figures relentlessly attacked Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce leading up to the Super Bowl, eventually drawing criticism from some right-wing peers
Swift’s relationship with Kelce has been drawing right-wing ire for months. In September, Kelce’s appearances in advertising campaigns for Pfizer and Bud Light spurred anti-vax and anti-LGBTQ attacks against the couple. [Media Matters, 9/27/23]
Prior to the Superbowl, right-wing figures claimed Swift was a Democratic operative or part of a “psyop.” They also claimed that the game would be rigged for Kelce’s team to win and that a Chiefs victory would strengthen Swift’s potential endorsement of President Joe Biden. [Media Matters, 2/1/24]
Even some right-wing media figures started begging fellow conservatives to stop attacking Swift. Some figures recognized the absurdity of such theories, asking their colleagues and peers to focus on more important issues heading into the 2024 election cycle. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said, “Guys, not everything you don’t like is a conspiracy.” [Media Matters, 2/2/24]
QAnon figures and far-right accounts accused Swift’s Super Bowl guest Ice Spice of being a “satanist” and “summoning demons”
QAnon account Shadow of Ezra claimed that Ice Spice, who came to the game with Swift, was “seen making hand gestures associated with Satanic symbolism while wearing an upside-down cross.” The account also said the Super Bowl was “nothing but a major Satanic ritual.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 7/17/23]
QAnon influencer Brian Cates said Ice Spice threw “up the devil sign with both hands and then does the double-hand collar lift to hold up the upside down cross to make sure attention is drawn to it.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 5/18/23]
QAnon influencer John Sabal (aka “QAnon John”) called Swift an “alcoholic harlot who likes to hang out with Satanists,” asking if “that thing next to her” was “summoning demons” with an “upside down cross.” [Gab, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 9/27/23]
QAnon influencerMJTruth posted a video of Ice Spice and Taylor Swift at the football game titled “A satanist performing a satanic ritual, while the drunken harlot gets hammered.” [Rumble, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 7/28/23]
Right-wing Twitter account For America posted, “With Chiefs down 3 how many more demons will Ice Spice summon?!?” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24]
Anti-vaccine figure Erin Elizabeth posted on Twitter, “Ice Spice who accompanied Taylor Swift to tonight's game throwing up satanic symbols while wearing an upside down cross.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 11/22/22]
Right-wing account End Wokeness said Ice Spice was showing “demonic hand gestures on the big screen” with an “upside down cross” and “not even hiding it.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24]
Former Fox News producer Kyle Becker accused Ice Spice of “demon summoning,” sharing a video of her touching her necklace. [Twitter/X, 2/11/24]
Real America’s Voice’s Ben Bergquam claimed that Swift was in “all black chugging while her friend Ice Spice wearing an upside down cross signs to the devil.” Bergquam called this “spiritual warfare” and asked God to “rebuke the evil and witchcraft of this generation.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24]
Other far-right figures claimed that the Super Bowl was “rigged” and the NFL is a “scam”
QAnon influencer Sun Tzu called the NFL a “scam” because it had announced “the address of the stadium in Las Vegas after Kansas City won the Super Bowl,” which was “333.” According to SunTzusWar, “Who has ever announced the address of the stadium of the Super Bowl? Just saying.” [Twitter/X, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 12/12/23]
“Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander called the Super Bowl “totally fake & rigged,” adding, “Notice no grass stains.” [Telegram, 2/11/24]
The Biden Twitter/X page posted a Dark Brandon meme, and QAnon John said it was “signaling to everyone that the Super Bowl was RIGGED in their favor.” He also called it “direct comms.” [Gab, 2/11/24; Jezebel, 2/12/24]
QAnon personality Woke Societies posted, “Tell me the nfl isn’t rigged.” [Telegram, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 4/18/22]
QAnon figures have continued the trend of labeling Swift a “psyop”
QAnon John posted screenshots of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama congratulating the Chiefs and “Taylor Swift’s boyfriend” with the caption “PSYOP CONFIRMED.” [Gab, 2/12/24]
QAnon influencer Jordan Sather: “There’s more aliens featured during this game than Taylor Swift. Subliminal soft disclosure be strong. Prepping our minds for something later this year? Psyop me harder baby.” [Telegram, 2/11/24; The Hill, 6/15/21]
A user on the QAnon forum TheDonald posted a picture of Taylor Swift with the caption “totally not a psyop.” [Patriots.win, 2/11/24; Media Matters, 12/12/23]
Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign spent a reported $10 million for two 30-second ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl. According to USA Today’s Ad Meter, his criminal justice reform ad was the least liked spot among viewers of any ad from the game.
Trump’s ad featured Alice Johnson, a woman who was sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense but had her sentence commuted by Trump at the request of Kim Kardashian West. The ad appears to falsely imply that Johnson’s commutation was part of Trump’s criminal justice reform.
Former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers (D) described the ad as “offensive,” dubbing it the “I freed a Negro” ad.
Viewers apparently agreed; the Trump spot ranked 62nd out of 62 ads evaluated, with just a 3.33 average rating. His second spot, focused on the economy, was not included in the rankings.
The highest rated ad of the night, by contrast, came from Jeep during the game’s third quarter. The ad, “Groundhog Day,” featured actor Bill Murray, who starred in the film of the same name in 1993, and scored a 7.01 average rating.
USA Today has tracked public opinion on Super Bowl ads for 32 years. Panelists vote on each spot and any adult citizen may sign up to participate.
Trump has used his pardon and commutation power sparingly, often helping prominent Republicans including Dinesh D’Souza, Joe Arpaio, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
President Donald Trump will give his first nationally televised interview with a broadcast network in seven months this Sunday when he appears on Fox Broadcasting Co. before the Super Bowl. While the prospect of the president facing detailed questions about the abuse of power scandal that triggered his impeachment by the House of Representatives should place him in political peril, no one at the White House will lose sleep over this weekend’s sit-down. That is because Trump will be interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity, a loyal sycophant with deep ties to his administration who has no interest whatsoever in trying to elicit damaging information from the president.
Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump have all sat for pregame interviews with the network hosting the Super Bowl (the game rotates between CBS, NBC, and Fox, the NFL’s three primary broadcast television rights holders). Because those interviews receive massive ratings, with a viewership generally between 10 to 20 million, they are showcases for each network’s talent. For NBC and CBS, that has meant calling on the star anchors of their morning, evening, and Sunday political talk shows to interview the president. Fox, on the other hand, traditionally gave the slot to conservative opinion host Bill O’Reilly, their “king of cable news.”
But this year’s Super Bowl offered Fox the opportunity to decide who would represent it in a new era, as Sunday marks the first time the network has hosted the Super Bowl since O’Reilly’s 2017 firing. If Fox executives had wanted to showcase their much-touted “news” side, they could have put forward someone like anchor Chris Wallace, who has occasionally made news for challenging interviews with Trump officials. Instead, they are sending Hannity, who is so sympathetic to Trump that he effectively functions as a White House spokesperson.
Fox’s message is clear: When the stakes are highest and the spotlight is brightest, the network produces right-wing propaganda, not journalism.
The last few years have seen Hannity evolve from a standard-issue GOP mouthpiece infamous for tossing softball questions to Republicans, to a powerful Trump administration insider. The Fox host defies traditional principles of journalism ethics by serving as a counselor to the president and others in his circle while simultaneously using his show to bolster the administration’s every move. Here’s a brief timeline:
2018: Profiles in The Washington Post and New York magazine detailed the scope of Hannity’s White House influence and regular conversations with Trump. He was revealed as a secret client of Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, a fact the Fox host had not disclosed in his commentary on Cohen’s case. And he appeared on stage and spoke at a Trump political rally on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.
2019: Hannity was a central figure in the Ukraine disinformation plot that triggered Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.
2020: Documents uncovered by BuzzFeed News showed that Hannity had served as a backchannel between Trump and his associates under investigation during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
These are violations of basic ethical tenets that any other news outlet would not tolerate — indeed, the revelation that Hannity was a Cohen client and his appearance at the Trump rally alone would have been grounds for immediate termination elsewhere. At Fox News, by contrast, early efforts to check Hannity have been replaced by passivity and acquiescence as his close ties to Trump have apparently made him untouchable. And in allowing Hannity to represent the network and interview the president on the biggest possible stage, Fox executives are now all but shouting from the rooftops that they have no interest in reining him in.
Sunday’s result is a foregone conclusion. Hannity may have conducted more one-on-one interviews with Trump in recent years than anyone else on the planet. Trump spent more than 17 hours on Hannity’s Fox show during the 2016 Republican primary and gave the host an additional 14 sit-downs after taking office. But for all that access, Hannity’s interviews are most notable for their consistency.
The pattern never varies: Hannity throws softballs, Trump responds with talking points, praise flows both ways, and the interview ends without any news being made. That’s what the audience will get on Sunday — not a shred of journalistic credibility, just the president’s leading booster and sometime personal adviser doing his best to make Trump look good.
That’s the presentation the network is willingly offering to the broader public. Fox executives could have dispatched a “news”-side anchor or reporter to try to do some journalism on Sunday. But they ultimately decided they’d rather send the president’s buddy to film an infomercial for his reelection campaign instead.
This would be an embarrassment for Fox if anyone there still had any capacity for embarrassment. But as we’ve seen, the network has long abandoned even the pretense that any rules apply to Hannity, its undisputed standard-bearer. He is the epitome of Fox’s news product, and so it is appropriate that he represent it to the world.
