Bad Bunny Has MAGA All Worked Up

As Bad Bunny continues to avoid the continental US on his world tour out of fears of ICE raids, news that he’ll be headlining the Super Bowl LX halftime show has been met with a furious backlash from MAGA influencers who’ve complained that he “doesn’t sing in English” and has been critical of Donald Trump.

The controversy has escalated beyond social media with Corey Lewandowski, adviser to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, threatening the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the event to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. "There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else," he told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on The Benny Show. "We will find you. We will apprehend you. We will put you in a detention facility and we will deport you, so know that that is a very real situation under this administration."

The episode exposes the anatomy of manufactured outrage and once again positions America's largest sporting event as a battleground for the country's identity politics.

The news, confirmed by the NFL late Sunday night, quickly became fuel for the controversy engine operating full-time on platforms like X. Within hours, a chorus of right-wing commentators and influencers activated a now-familiar script. Johnson branded him "a massive Trump hater" and an "anti-ICE activist.” Jack Posobiec, a prominent Pizzagate promoter, took aim at Jay-Z, whose company Roc Nation produces the event, as the architect of cultural “engineering.” The "End Wokeness" account, with 4 million followers, resorted to visual mockery, posting an image of the artist in a dress in response to the announcement.

These attacks are not random; they are textbook tactics of a culture war that seeks to mobilize its base by identifying a symbolic enemy. In this case, Bad Bunny. Not only is he an artist who sings predominantly in Spanish—a fact that influencer Mario Nawfal countered by saying that the “average halftime viewer in Des Moines doesn’t speak fluent reggaeton”—but his activism is explicit, consistent and directly antagonistic to the ideological platform of American conservatism.

The hostility towards Bad Bunny is not rooted in his music, but in his message. His decision not to tour in the United States, out of a stated fear that his fans will be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, is a political statement that few stars dare to make. “People from the US could come here to see the show. Latinos and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here, or to any part of the world. But 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 in an interview with i-D magazine.

This stance transforms his concerts from mere entertainment events into potential sanctuaries, and his absence into an act of protest.

Bad Bunny has been an outspoken critic of Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated territory, which limits the rights and opportunities of its citizens. His activism has focused on supporting the island, where his 31-day residency generated a $400 million economic impact, according to an estimate from Wells Fargo.

He has openly criticized the Trump administration, using his art as a vehicle for dissent. The music video for "NUEVAYoL" features a voice actor that appears to be mimicking Trump apologizing to immigrants. His advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights and his embrace of fashion that defies gender conventions place him at the epicenter of conservative anxieties about masculinity and traditional values.

His activism, moreover, is deeply rooted in his Puerto Rican identity. After disparaging remarks by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at a Trump rally, Bad Bunny's response was a video celebrating the island's culture, concluding, "we are fighting since day one of our existence, we are the definition of heart.” It is this authenticity and his refusal to dilute his cultural or political identity to appeal to a broader market that makes him such a potent and, to his detractors, dangerous figure.

The NFL's choice, far from being an oversight, is a calculated business move and a continuation of its strategy to rejuvenate and diversify its audience.

The league is aware that its traditional viewership base is aging. Attracting younger audiences and the growing Hispanic market is a business imperative. Bad Bunny, the most listened-to artist on Spotify worldwide from 2020 to 2022, represents the key to accessing that global market.

The NFL's partnership with Jay-Z's Roc Nation, launched in 2019, was designed to do just that: inject cultural relevance into the halftime show, an event that had become predictable and artistically safe. Kendrick Lamar's acclaimed and politically charged performance in 2024, which used American symbolism to deliver a blunt critique of racism, demonstrated that the NFL is willing to take calculated risks if the result is cultural relevance and global conversation.

By choosing Bad Bunny, the NFL not only secures a global superstar, but also aligns itself with a narrative of inclusion and representation. The artist himself framed it in those terms,

"It's for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown... this is for my people, my culture, and our history.”

The controversy surrounding Bad Bunny illustrates an inescapable reality: in today's America, there are no apolitical cultural spaces. The Super Bowl, perhaps the last great mass culture ritual that gathers a cross-cultural audience, has inevitably become a referendum on national identity. Every artistic choice is analyzed through a political lens, and every performance, a potential statement in the culture war.

The reaction of the digital right seeks not to persuade, but to reinforce the boundaries of their own ideological community. For them, the presence of a Puerto Rican artist, who does not sing in English and criticizes immigration policy, on the most American stage of all, is an existential provocation.

Regardless of what Benito Martinez Ocasio presents at Levi's Stadium on February 8, his performance has already achieved one goal: to expose the tectonic fault lines of contemporary American culture. In his statement, he used the metaphor of scoring a touchdown. That touchdown will not just be musical; it will be the reclamation of a space at the center of the empire, singing in its own language and with its own rules, demonstrating that culture, like country, no longer responds to a single narrative.

This article was originally published by WIRED en Español.