It’s time to take your Duolingo Spanish course seriously.
On Sunday, Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, announced on social media that he will headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Feb. 8.
The Puerto Rican superstar — who has been long credited with helping to popularize Spanish-language rap music — swiftly made it clear on his social media accounts that he intends to do his entire set en español.
Considering that the right loves to use phrases like “We speak English in America” and “Go back to your country” towards non-English speakers, one would assume that MAGA fans would be furious at the NFL for its halftime show selection, which is chosen in partnership with Jay-Z’s entertainment company, Roc Nation.
And they certainly are for those eyeroll-inducing reasons, but their outrage goes a tad deeper than that.
Notable MAGA mouthpieces — like Benny Johnson, a right-wing Daily Wire commentator, Joe Concha of Fox News, Jack Posobiec, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist — and others quickly expressed their outrage on Elon Musk’s platform, X.
There’s several reasons why conservatives are upset that Bad Bunny will be performing on the nation’s biggest stage during a sporting event so synonymous with America that it rivals apple pie.
The Grammy winner is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, and made his opposition clear as early as Trump’s first term. During a concert in 2017, he wore a T-shirt that read: “Are you tweeter or president?” in Spanish.
When Billboard asked him at the time what his shirt said, Bad Bunny responded: “It doesn’t need an explanation, but he [Trump] will need a Puerto Rican or Mexican to understand the meaning.”
The “Dákiti” musician is also an unapologetic LGBTQ+ ally, and even scored GLAAD’s Vanguard Award in 2023 for his advocacy.
Not only does Bad Bunny’s style often bend gender norms, he also publicly condemned the brutal murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano, a trans woman murdered in the city of Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, in 2020 after she attempted to use the women’s bathroom at a fast food restaurant.
After initial reports of Luciano’s murder described her as “a man dressed in a black skirt,” Bad Bunny decided to speak out for Luciano during a 2020 performance on the “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” by wearing a black skirt and a T-shirt that read, “They killed Alexa, not a man in a skirt,” in Spanish.
Yet, the thing MAGA seems the most upset about are his remarks to i-D magazine earlier this month about how his upcoming “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” tour will in part be skipping the U.S. because of Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdowns with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“There was the issue that … ICE could be outside (my concert venue),” he told the magazine, per CNN. “And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”
Bad Bunny clarified on Sunday that thanks to the NFL and Roc Nation, he was willing to make one exception on his tour, which begins in November.
“I’ve been thinking about it these days, and after discussing it with my team, I think I’ll do just one date in the United States,” he said.
There are also plenty of people — some of whom aren’t even Bad Bunny fans — who are amped about his 2026 Super Bowl performance, however. Plenty of left-leaning folks on X expressed their excitement about the possibility of a halftime show that could potentially be even more politically satisfying than Kendrick Lamar’s performance earlier this year.