It’s hard to judge from where I’m sitting, but it feels like the MAGA backlash to Bad Bunny is sort of a cultural turning point, right? These people have all of the power they could ever want, they’ve got masked ICE thugs invading American cities and assaulting citizens and immigrants alike, they’re destroying the American economy and global economy, and they’re still f–king mad. They’re mad that they can’t stomp their little baby feet and force the NFL to hire someone else for the Super Bowl Halftime Show. I think the NFL’s defiance is a huge part of this too – the NFL was supposed to “belong” to MAGA, right? And the NFL is just shrugging at the MAGA hissy fit. Well, now Speaker Mike Johnson has chimed in on Bad Bunny.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has weighed in on the political debate over Bad Bunny being booked to play the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, saying it was “a terrible decision” — echoing the beliefs of President Donald J. Trump, who already established his own antipathy toward Bad Bunny.
Asked about the controversy outside House chambers, Johnson admitted that the globally popular artist who just hosted “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend was not really on his radar, but said he knew it was a bad call anyway.
“I didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was. But it sounds like a terrible decision, in my view, from what I’m hearing,” Johnson said. Asked why, the speaker noted, “It sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience… And there are so many eyes on the Super Bowl — a lot of young, impressionable children. And, in my view, you would have Lee Greenwood, or role models, doing that. Not somebody like this.”
Johnson did not mention, as some other Bad Bunny detractors have, that a bone of contention for some conservatives is that the Puerto Rican artist sings exclusively in Spanish. The singer also took flak from the right for recently saying that, following a record-breaking residency in Puerto Rico, he would not be bringing his tour to the continental United States any time soon because of the possibility that it would draw ICE raids on his crowds. That fear was all but confirmed when Trump administration officials said ICE would be at the Super Bowl in force, in response to Bad Bunny getting star billing.
“It sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience” – Bad Bunny is one of the biggest artists in global music. He’s sold over 115 million albums, he’s broken all kinds of streaming records and his music is popular across the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities in North America, South America, Europe and beyond. If anything, Bad Bunny is more popular and more of a “consensus choice” for the Halftime show than pretty much anyone else they’ve chosen in three decades. It’s not even like these people can’t say it outloud, even if Speaker Johnson pulls his punches – they’re mad because Bad Bunny speaks Spanish and he’s from Puerto Rico. That’s it. That’s all it is.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
