When Trump started his political career, it invited everyone to express their racism openly. Prior to that, they were adhering to the Reagan rules, which was instead to use racist dog whistles. (welfare state, street gangs, urban crime, and so on).

As the MAGA movement formed, open racism became a means of costly signaling. It tells your fellow MAGAs that you are one of them. It also tells the rest of us that you are racist.

Other signaling includes talking about liberals in the same manner one uses a racial slur, not only regarding them as a monolithic bloc¹ but also accusing them of outrageous wrongs, specifically acts of treason or betrayal of the country. This is much like blood libel, in which the accusations are not meant to be plausible, rather that fellow MAGAs are to pretend they are true. See also They're eating the dogs.

Anyway, Tuberville had shown time and again in his career that he doesn't care if he looks stupid, especially to anyone outside of MAGA, but that he is a staunch MAGA loyalist who will lick any boot and even sacrifice himself to stay adjacent to power.

Of course, when Trump or some higher up actually requires that he sacrifice himself his opinion may change. But he's signaling that he's a good, obedient dog to the end.

I also anticipate that when Trump dies or otherwise MAGA falls out of fashion (it's certainly losing popularity already), Tuberville will try to pretend he was never really into all that MAGA nonsense, and none of his statements and behavior ever happened. And it will be up to the public to make sure neither he, nor any other opportunists like him, ever live it down.

¹ Liberals are not a monolithic bloc even if most of them share some common values. The same is true for conservatives, feminists, Methodists or any other significantly large demographic. -- This is why the face-eating leopards always eventually come for your face no matter how true and loyal you are; in Fascism, the set of acceptable identity markers closes like a Fortnite perimeter and shuts you out.