President Trump denounced Bad Bunny over his Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, complaining that “nobody understands a word this guy is saying” after the largely Spanish-language performance.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the Puerto Rican superstar musician better known as Bad Bunny, has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration. Just days ago at the Grammy Awards, he declared “ICE out” — referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who have been the face of Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown — while accepting an award.
At Sunday’s game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Ca., Bad Bunny delivered a star-studded show, which included a real wedding and appearances by the pop singers Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin.
Near the end of the 13-minute performance, Bad Bunny delivered a message in English: “God bless America,” and went on to name countries across North and South America. He held a football imprinted with the English words “Together, We Are America” and said in Spanish, “We’re still here.”
The New York Times described the show as “a kaleidoscopic blast of merriment — a showcase of some of the most ecstatic and celebratory aspects of Latin culture.” But the performance, which came at a tense moment in American politics, prompted Mr. Trump’s ire.
In a long post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said the show was “absolutely terrible,” adding that it “doesn’t represent our standards.” He called the show “an affront to the Greatness of America” and a “slap in the face” to the country.
While the president suggested that Bad Bunny’s lyrics were unintelligible to most, Spanish is by far the most common language spoken in U.S. homes besides English, with more than 40 million speakers.
Mr. Trump has frequently used hateful stereotypes or made false generalizations about immigrants, particularly from Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico. Bad Bunny, an American citizen, was born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. Weeks before the game, Mr. Trump called Bad Bunny a “terrible choice” for the halftime show. “All it does is sow hatred,” he said.
While campaigning in 2023, Mr. Trump said undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And since his return to office last year, the president has overseen a sweeping immigration crackdown, which has drawn public outrage over its tactics and the deaths of U.S. citizens as his administration has deported more than 600,000 people.
The president and his supporters have long invoked language as an important front in that cultural war. In 2024, Mr. Trump denounced newly arrived migrants for speaking languages that “nobody has ever heard of,” which he called “a very horrible thing.”
In March, he signed a largely symbolic executive order declaring English to be the national language. The president’s supporters called it a common-sense assertion of fact; critics said it mostly served to belittle those who grew up speaking other languages.
On Sunday night, Turning Point USA, the conservative activist group, streamed an alternative halftime performance that targeted a right-wing audience. Kid Rock headlined the show, playing two songs before it concluded with a video tribute to Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, who was killed last year.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
Laura Chung is a Sydney-based reporter and researcher for The Times, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
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