“Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive,” said Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic. “They were totally wrong.” The world’s most popular recording artist took the world’s biggest stage and chose to throw a party instead of picking a fight, letting his Spanish lyrics and roving celebration of his Puerto Rican culture say all that needed to be said to the forces in America who are menacing Spanish-speaking people of color. In short, “he applied one of the greatest lessons you learn as a part of an oppressed group: Joy is resistance. Pride in your heritage is protest,” said Nadira Goffe in Slate. As he ran through songs from his catalog, including from the record that was recently awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican native danced amid island vignettes, surrounded himself with Latino celebrities including Karol G and Ricky Martin, hosted an actual wedding, and punctuated it all by spiking a football that read “Together we are America.”
Perhaps surprisingly, “MAGA is fighting with itself over Bad Bunny’s show,” said Hafiz Rashid in The New Republic. President Trump immediately issued a Truth Social post calling the performance “one of the worst EVER!” and “an affront to the Greatness of America” because “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” But there was heavy pushback. On X, conservative influencer Emily Austin applauded Bad Bunny because, instead of dividing the audience, he “chose unity & love.”
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