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was not just a complaint about lyrics: it became an argument over language, citizenship and who is allowed to represent America.
The short answer
The backlash against Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show was about more than whether viewers understood the lyrics. Conservative critics objected to his opposition to Donald Trump and ICE, his Spanish-dominant music, and the decision to place Puerto Rican culture at the center of one of the most symbolically American television events. The completed performance answered those objections indirectly: it presented Spanish, Puerto Rican identity and Latino life not as outside challenges to American culture, but as part of the American story.
Bad Bunny performed at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on February 8, 2026, after the NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced him as the Super Bowl LX headliner on September 29, 2025. Before the show, the recurring conservative complaint was that an artist with supposedly no songs in English should not headline the halftime stage. Afterward, Donald Trump called the performance absolutely terrible
and one of the worst halftime shows.
That description left out the central cultural question raised by the booking: does a performer have to translate Puerto Rican identity into an English-language crossover act before a U.S. institution can present it as American?
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Why Bad Bunny’s booking became political
The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation did not present Bad Bunny as a conventional English-language pop crossover. Their announcements emphasized Puerto Rico, culture and history. That made the choice politically charged even before he stepped onto the field.
Bad Bunny, whose given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, had already become a target for conservatives because of his criticism of Trump-era immigration policy and ICE enforcement. In July 2025, his NUEVAYoL music video used a Trump-like voice apologizing for an immigration position, according to contemporary reporting. He had also expressed concern that immigration raids could make Latino audiences afraid to attend concerts in the United States.
Those positions led critics to interpret the Super Bowl booking as an implicit rebuke of the Trump administration. That interpretation was not the same thing as saying that the halftime show would be a campaign speech. In fact, the finished performance was much more focused on Puerto Rican music, ordinary community life, love and the wider Americas than on directly attacking Trump.
The distinction matters. Anti-Trump and anti-ICE described political positions attributed to Bad Bunny. Anti-American was an accusation made by detractors. Supporters and other commentators argued the opposite: that affirming Puerto Rican identity was an assertion of American identity, especially because Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
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| Date | What happened | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| March 1, 2025 | The White House announced that Trump had signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. | The order created an immediate political backdrop for complaints about Spanish-language programming. It also said agencies were not required to stop offering documents or services in other languages. |
| July 2025 | Bad Bunny’s NUEVAYoL video used a Trump-like voice, and his criticism of immigration raids and ICE continued to draw attention. | Conservative critics connected the artist’s politics to the later Super Bowl booking. |
| September 29, 2025 | The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl LX halftime headliner. | The choice immediately became a debate about language, national identity and representation. |
| Late September–October 2025 | Benny Johnson, Danica Patrick, Tomi Lahren and others criticized the selection. Corey Lewandowski also made remarks about heightened immigration enforcement around the event. | The backlash moved from individual criticism into a broader political media fight. |
| February 1, 2026 | Bad Bunny won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. | The Recording Academy described it as the first all-Spanish-language album to win that category, increasing the sense that the Super Bowl appearance represented a mainstream shift. |
| February 5, 2026 | At a pre-Super Bowl press conference, Bad Bunny said he would bring his culture to the show and joked that viewers did not need to learn Spanish to enjoy it, although they should be ready to dance. | He made clear that cultural translation and linguistic assimilation were not going to be the show’s organizing principle. |
| February 8, 2026 | Bad Bunny performed the halftime show at Levi’s Stadium. | The performance was almost entirely in Spanish and built around Puerto Rican and Latino cultural imagery. |
| February 8–9, 2026 | Trump condemned the completed show, while Fox News personalities and other conservative voices continued to criticize its language and Bad Bunny’s political views. | The controversy continued after viewers had seen the actual performance, rather than only the booking. |
What critics meant by no songs in English
The phrase became the most efficient slogan for the backlash. Benny Johnson described Bad Bunny as a massive Trump hater
and an anti-ICE activist
while also claiming that he had no songs in English.
Danica Patrick argued that songs not in English should not be allowed at one of the country’s biggest television events.
There were two arguments embedded in that complaint:
- An entertainment argument: some viewers believed a mass U.S. television audience should be given lyrics it could immediately understand.
- A cultural and political argument: others treated Spanish-language performance as evidence that the show was not sufficiently American, particularly because the performer had criticized the administration’s immigration policies.
The second argument explains why the controversy was larger than an ordinary debate over subtitles. English is widely used in the United States, but the country’s mass culture has long included languages other than English. Bad Bunny’s booking challenged the assumption that a performer must make Spanish-language culture secondary, explanatory or decorative before it can occupy the center of a national broadcast.
It is also important to describe the show accurately. It was almost entirely in Spanish, not literally devoid of English. Coverage identified a small amount of spoken English, including Bad Bunny saying God Bless America
near the conclusion. The Apple Music presentation also offered English captions and Spanish subtitles. The precise criticism, therefore, is that the musical performance was primarily Spanish-language—not that no English appeared at all.
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The language debate followed Trump’s English-order announcement
The timing gave the dispute an especially sharp political edge. On March 1, 2025, the White House announced an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. The order did not require federal agencies to abandon services or documents in other languages, but its symbolism was clear: language had become part of the administration’s definition of national identity.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance arrived in that atmosphere. Complaints that the country’s biggest broadcast should be conducted in English could therefore be heard as more than a preference for comprehension. They became part of a larger argument about whose language, history and culture are allowed to represent the United States.
That does not mean every person who wanted more English in the show was making an anti-Latino argument. Viewers can reasonably prefer music they understand. The political pattern emerged from the combination of language complaints, attacks on Bad Bunny’s immigration views and claims that a Puerto Rican performer was somehow un-American.
Why Puerto Rico was at the center of the argument
The controversy exposed a basic misunderstanding—or, in some cases, a denial—of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico is not a foreign country, even though it has its own distinctive political status, culture, history and national symbolism.
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That status made the debate unusually revealing. Critics were not simply asking whether a singer from another country could headline an American event. They were disputing whether a Puerto Rican artist could represent America without first presenting a more assimilated version of himself.
The performance leaned directly into that tension. Instead of treating Puerto Rican references as a brief regional segment, it made them the foundation of the show: the settings, the music, the dance, the visual language and the social scenes all came from a Puerto Rican and broader Latino frame.
Bad Bunny’s message was not that the United States had no distinct identity. It was that America could not be reduced to one language or to the continental United States alone. At the end of the show, he named countries across the Americas. The gesture broadened the word geographically and culturally at the precise moment when critics were using it to exclude his identity.
What happened during the halftime show
The approximately 13-minute performance used a sequence of visual tableaux rather than a standard English-language crossover presentation. Coverage described a Puerto Rican casita, a bodega or street setting, a wedding celebration, laborers, domino players and other details associated with everyday Latino life.
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The show drew heavily from DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, the album that had won Album of the Year at the Grammys one week earlier. The Recording Academy described the record as deeply rooted in Puerto Rican sounds, including salsa, bomba, plena and reggaeton. Those influences helped make the halftime set feel less like an isolated celebrity showcase and more like a compressed cultural documentary about place, memory and community.
Lady Gaga appeared in a salsa-inflected performance of Die With a Smile.
Ricky Martin and Los Pleneros de la Cresta were among the featured performers or collaborators reported in coverage. A real couple was married onstage, with Bad Bunny serving as witness. The moment reinforced the show’s emphasis on celebration and belonging rather than turning the entire performance into a direct anti-Trump protest.
The visual details mattered because they answered the political criticism without repeating it. Rather than delivering a lengthy speech about immigration or the president, the show presented Puerto Rican homes, streets, music, work, religion-like ceremony, friendship and family life as worthy of the largest entertainment platform in the country.
The closing images made the argument explicit. Bad Bunny said God Bless America
in English and then named countries across the Americas. A large screen displayed The only thing more powerful than hate is love.
The football in the closing image carried the message Together, We Are America.
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Trump’s reaction and the organized backlash
Trump reacted directly on Truth Social after the show, calling it absolutely terrible
and one of the worst halftime performances. Conservative television and online commentators continued to focus on the lack of English-language lyrics, Bad Bunny’s criticism of immigration enforcement, and objections to perceived sexual or political content.
A Republican lawmaker also called for scrutiny of the halftime show and raised the possibility of regulatory action. That was a political reaction, not evidence that a formal enforcement action had succeeded. The distinction is important: public criticism and calls for investigation should not be reported as an actual regulatory finding.
The response was also organized into competing programming. On February 8, Turning Point USA aired an alternative All-American Halftime Show
featuring Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. It was marketed around faith, family and freedom and explicitly positioned as counterprogramming to the official halftime show.
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That alternative event showed that the dispute was not only spontaneous viewer dissatisfaction. Political organizations turned the halftime slot into a cultural contest: one side presented Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican and Latino identity as part of America, while the counterprogram presented a narrower set of traditional patriotic symbols as the corrective.
How many people watched?
Nielsen reported that the Bad Bunny halftime segment averaged 128.2 million viewers. The full Super Bowl broadcast averaged 124.9 million viewers, according to post-show reporting.
The halftime figure exceeding the game’s average audience underscores the enormous reach of the performance. It does not, by itself, establish that the show was the most-watched halftime performance ever. The two figures cover different measurement windows, and available NFL comparisons identified Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 halftime show as remaining ahead on the cited comparison. The safer conclusion is that Bad Bunny performed before a huge U.S. audience at a moment when Spanish-dominant Latin music was already central to mainstream entertainment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the performance represented
The strongest defensible interpretation is that the booking marked the normalization of Spanish-dominant Latin music at the center of U.S. mass entertainment. Bad Bunny was not selected despite being Puerto Rican or despite performing primarily in Spanish. The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation promoted those qualities as part of the appeal.
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But the booking tested an old expectation: that artists from minority-language communities may enter the mainstream only after adapting themselves to English-speaking audiences. Bad Bunny’s show reversed that sequence. The institution provided the largest stage first, and the audience was asked to encounter Puerto Rican culture on its own terms.
That is why the controversy became so intense. The question was not merely whether viewers liked reggaeton, salsa or Spanish lyrics. It was whether American popular culture could make room for an artist whose identity was not translated into a more familiar English-language package.
Where to hear and watch the performance
The album most closely associated with the show is DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. For listeners who want a physical copy, Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS on vinyl is available in an Amazon Exclusive edition listed by Amazon. The record is relevant here as the musical and cultural source material for the performance—not as evidence for any of the political claims surrounding it.
Apple Music and Apple TV also listed an official 13-minute replay of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX Halftime Show. Availability can vary by territory, platform and date, so viewers looking for the complete performance should use the official Apple listing rather than assume that every third-party streaming service carries it.
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Conclusion
The far-right criticism began with language, but it was ultimately about belonging. Bad Bunny’s opponents saw a Spanish-dominant performance by an artist critical of Trump and ICE as a rejection of American identity. The show made the opposite claim: Puerto Rican culture, Spanish and Latino life do not need to become less themselves to belong on an American stage.
Its most pointed response was not a political attack. It was the decision to make Puerto Rico visible, audible and central—and then to close by saying that America belongs to more people than the backlash wanted to admit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show entirely in Spanish?
No. The musical performance was almost entirely in Spanish, but it was not literally free of English. Bad Bunny said “God Bless America” near the end, and the presentation included English captions and Spanish subtitles.
Why did conservatives call Bad Bunny anti-Trump or anti-ICE?
Bad Bunny has publicly criticized Trump-era immigration policies and ICE enforcement. Critics connected those views to his Super Bowl booking, but the finished performance was primarily about Puerto Rico, community, love and the Americas rather than a direct anti-Trump speech.
Are Puerto Ricans American citizens?
Yes. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. The controversy partly reflected a dispute over whether a Puerto Rican artist and Spanish-language culture could represent America on the Super Bowl stage.
How many people watched Bad Bunny’s halftime show?
Nielsen reported an average of 128.2 million viewers for the halftime segment and 124.9 million for the full Super Bowl broadcast. Those are different measurement windows and should not be treated as a definitive all-time ranking of halftime shows.
What was the alternative halftime show?
Turning Point USA aired an alternative “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. It was marketed around faith, family and freedom as counterprogramming to the official show.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: The Bad Bunny halftime controversy combined objections to his anti-Trump and anti-ICE views with resistance to a nearly all-Spanish performance. The show answered by presenting Puerto Rican culture as an integral part of America, not as something that required English-language assimilation.
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