MAGA has a meltdown over male cheerleaders

“The next generation of cheer has arrived!” the Minnesota Vikings announced as they revealed their 2025 cheerleading squad. And just like that, MAGA had a meltdown.

The video opens with one Vikings cheerleader doing a backflip. Then the camera pans back and reveals the full squad dancing in dark uniforms with Vikings logos across the front and white pom poms. Forming two lines, the dancers walk side by side toward the camera. And when all the cheerleaders pass from view, a group of elementary kids is revealed, screaming and cheering with their own uniforms and pom poms.

Minnesota Vikings cheerleader Blaize Shiek performs before the NFL Preseason 2025 game against the New England Patriots at U.S. Bank Stadium on August 16, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

So why is MAGA declaring a moral state of emergency?

The initial cheerleader who did the backflip is a guy.

MAGA’s meltdown

“He’s a DEI hire,” Dana Loesch declared on her nationally syndicated radio show. “He’s a twinky-looking dude.”

“I don’t want to see a male on the football field of an NFL game unless he’s running camera, reffing the game or he’s got a helmet on. That’s it,” she said. “I don’t want to see no little, you know, dude out there throwing himself around, shaking what he does not have on the field. That’s for ladies. … This is a man thing. Women love football. But come on. More men love football than women do. Men don’t want to see that out there.”

“I would like to ask the ownership of the NFL and the commissioner, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Sen. Tommy Tuberville mocked on the Hot Mic podcast. “You’ve got the No. 1 sport on planet earth in terms of people watching it. Your business is growing. It’s getting better and better. There’s some ways you’ve tried to attack it over the last 10 to 15 years, but you’ve been able to withstand that.”

Remember, this isn’t the first time MAGA has entered a collective panic about the NFL. When NFL players were kneeling during the National Anthem during Donald Trump’s first administration, Trump responded by demanding, “Get that son of a bitch off the field.”

Minnesota Vikings cheerleader Blaize Shiek stands for the National Anthem before the NFL Preseason 2025 game against the New England Patriots at U.S. Bank Stadium on August 16 in Minneapolis. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

And when Taylor Swift started dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey, MAGA became overcome with fear the NFL would rig the games to help the Chiefs win the Super Bowl in order to give Swift a bigger stage with which to endorse President Joe Biden. So they declared “holy war” on Swift.

Tuberville, a former college football coach, continued: “But if you’re going to be woke and you’re gonna try to take the men out of men’s sports, which is what you’re doing — they’re trying to take gender and say, ‘OK, we’re going to make it more about gender than we are about masculinity’ — then you’re going to have a huge problem. … This is not just about a couple of people being men cheerleaders. It is about pushing a narrative that you want to put gender into sports and let everyone know we’re trying to show, ‘Hey, we’re going to take the masculinity out of it a little bit.’ And that’s not going to happen in the South.”

Of course, despite Tuberville’s ignorance on the topic, there are teams in the South that already have male cheerleaders. In addition to the Minnesota Vikings, other NFL teams that have men on their cheerleading squad include the Baltimore Ravens, Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, LA Rams, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tennessee Titans. That’s 38% of the league, with a number of those teams in the South.

But Tuberville counters: “Just be an American. Just push the American narrative. Push sports as it’s supposed to be.”

Continue reading at Baptist News Global