Bad Bunny is at the peak of his powers. The Puerto Rican artist just finished a sold-out, month-long residency at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan, and on Sunday DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS became the first album of 2025 to surpass 7 billion streams on Spotify. The NFL announced the same day that Benito will headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show.
It’s going to be loud, it’s going to be Latin, it’s going to be (mostly) in Spanish, and it’s already driving right-wingers insane.
Prominent Republicans are already fuming at the possibility that Bad Bunny’s halftime performance in February will feature critiques of President Donald Trump and his targeting of immigrant communities, and that it may require them to turn on English subtitles.
Earlier this month, Bad Bunny canceled the U.S. dates of the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS tour over concerns that large gatherings of Latinos in the U.S. could be magnets for the Trump administration’s anti-immigration efforts. “There was the issue of — like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about,” he said of the decision.
The announcement that a vocal critic of President Donald Trump’s agenda will play the Super Bowl sparked immediate outrage from the MAGA base.
“The NFL is self-destructing year after year,” MAGA slop YouTuber Benny Johnson wrote on X. “Massive Trump hater. Anti-ICE activist. No songs in English,” he added.
Conspiracy theorist and right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec suggested that the selection was a conspiracy orchestrated by former President Barack Obama.
“Barack Obama’s best friend Jay-Z runs the Super Bowl selection process through his company Roc Nation which has an exclusive contract with the NFL. This is who chooses the halftime show, the most-watched musical performance in America,” he wrote.
Conservative commentator Greg Price noted that “the NFL chose Bad Bunny to perform the Super Bowl halftime show despite the fact that he recently said he wouldn’t perform in the continental United States again because ICE is deporting illegal aliens.”
Some of the criticism was a little more stylistic. The right wing account “Redheaded Libertarian” described Bad Bunny as “demonic Marxist who has been granted the largest stage with the greatest audience in the middle of a Christian revival.” Podcaster Trish Regan complained that Bad Bunny’s music contained Spanish-language slang and explicit language, even halftime show performers typically edit out any explicit content. “This is a rapper with a catalog of vulgar lyrics in Spanish and English — including calling a president a “mamabicho” (translation: vile insult),” she wrote.
The account “End Wokeness,” which boasts almost 4 million followers on X, suggested that a Harper’s Bazaar photoshoot in which Bad Bunny wore a skirt should have weighed against his selection for the performance. Commentator Mario Nawfal wrote that “maybe someone should let the NFL know that the average halftime viewer in Des Moines doesn’t speak fluent reggaeton […] Enjoy the show, America. Just don’t ask for subtitles.” Right wing filmmaker Robby Starbuck complained that “the guy literally says he isn’t touring the US because of Trump’s ICE raids and just released a video mocking President Trump.”
“Also, most of his songs aren’t even in English,” Starbuck griped. “This is not a pick designed to unite football fans or let people just enjoy the show. It was a pick designed to divide fans and no doubt Bad Bunny will find some way to push a woke message.” Starbuck also suggested that team owners were either “in on this idiocy” or “just culturally that disconnected from reality.”
Starbuck and the nativist right are speaking to a mirror. The reality is that public approval of the Trump administration’s handling of immigration enforcement continues to slip as the Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement continue to use authoritarian tactics. The reality is that Latin and South America are two of the largest and fastest-growing viewership markets for the NFL. The reality is that Bad Bunny, a vocal Trump critic, is one of the most popular artists in the world — whether conservatives like it or not.
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