Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was divisive before it even started, with many conservatives criticizing the Puerto Rican singer’s political outspokenness, including condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week at the Grammy Awards, where he took home the prize for album of the year.
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But while many fans lauded the Latin hitmaker’s 13-minute set on Sunday, despite President Donald Trump calling it “absolutely terrible” and “an affront to the Greatness of America,” one Republican critic is taking his offense to another level.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R, Tenn.) posted on X on Monday evening a letter addressed to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in which he called for an immediate inquiry into the National Football League and broadcaster NBCUniversal over their “prior knowledge, review, and approval” of what he alleged to be “a performance dominated by sexually explicit lyrical themes and suggestive choreography.”
In his post, Ogles called the halftime show “pure smut” and claimed that it featured “explicit displays of gay sexual acts, women gyrating provocatively, and Bad Bunny shamelessly grabbing his crotch while dry-humping the air” and that the singer’s mostly Spanish-language lyrics “openly glorified sodomy and countless other unspeakable depravities.”
The Tennessee lawmaker, whom Trump has previously called a “Conservative Warrior,” argued in his letter to the House committee that songs in Bad Bunny’s set, including “Safaera” and “Yo Perreo Sola,” included references to sexual content that would be “readily apparent across any language barrier.”
While Bad Bunny did perform parts of his song “Safaera,” which includes lines in Spanish such as “My d-ck is being chased and I want you to hide it” and “If your boyfriend doesn’t eat your ass / He better f-ck off,” he refrained from singing the more explicit parts of those lyrics during the halftime show.
Ogles argued that it was “highly implausible” that the NFL and NBC lacked advance knowledge of the set’s content. He requested that the House committee examine the extent of executives’ and producers’ knowledge of the songs’ nature and accompanying choreography, the internal review and translation processes, and whether safeguards—such as broadcast delay protocols and standards review procedures—were “properly applied” or “intentionally disregarded.”
“These flagrant, indecent acts are illegal to be displayed on public airways,” Ogles declared. “American culture will not be mocked or corrupted without consequence.”
TIME reached out to the NFL and NBC for comment.
In a previous X post, Ogles said that Bad Bunny’s halftime performance was “conclusive proof that Puerto Rico should never be a state.”
Another GOP congressman, Rep. Randy Fine (R, Fla.), asserted on X earlier Monday that the halftime show was “illegal,” attaching screenshots of the translated lyrics of “Safaera” (many lines of which Bad Bunny did not actually perform). Fine said he would send Federal Communications Commission chairperson and Trump ally Brendan Carr—who last year pressured ABC to suspend late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel—a letter to call for “dramatic action,” including potentially fines and broadcast license reviews, against the NFL, NBC, and Bad Bunny.
Anticipating the controversy over Bad Bunny’s performance, conservative activist group Turning Point USA staged counterprogramming advertised as a celebration of “faith, family, and freedom” to cater to the MAGA crowd. The group’s “All-American Halftime Show” was headlined by Trump-supporting musician Kid Rock—known for songs such as “Cool, Daddy Cool,” which features the lines “Young ladies, young ladies / I like ’em underage, see / Some say that’s statutory / But I say it’s mandatory,” which he didn’t perform during the Turning Point USA halftime show, as well as “Bawitdaba,” which he did perform, including a verse that shouts out “topless dancers” and “hookers” in Hollywood.
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