Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin with the assist
“God bless America,” shouted superstar Bad Bunny in English to end his Puerto Rico-themed Super Bowl halftime show. Then he recited, south to north, the names of countries spread across North and South America.
Donald Trump believes they are his to dominate. But Bad Bunny told the stadium and over 120 million viewers globally, in song, dance and imagery, oh, hell no. Then he spiked a football reading, “Together, We Are America.” Behind and above him, a massive jumbotron displayed, in bold black and white, Bad Bunny’s message to the world.
Lady Gaga made a surprise cameo, singing a Latin-inspired rendition of her and Bruno Mars’ song, “Die With a Smile.” She and Bad Bunny then went on to dance together at what appeared to be the wedding’s reception.
Ricky Martin later made a surprise appearance in the latter part of the show, before Bad Bunny ended his performance with his hit song “DtMF.”
The screens inside Levi’s Stadium also featured the message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” — something Bad Bunny has expressed before.
I admit it. I teared up.
Asawin Suebsaeng at Zeteo observes:
If anyone wants to argue Bad Bunny avoided partisan politics during the Super Bowl, he sort of did – on paper, with the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability. His message couldn’t have been clearer, and it joyfully spat in the face of what Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the gang running the federal government stand for. But if the NFL wants to pretend its halftime show didn’t have an inherently anti-Trump message to it, the Trump administration is already showing it’s not willing to give them a pass.
“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” the literal US president whined on his social-media app Sunday night. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the USA, and all over the World.”
Yet Daily Beast reports that Bad Bunny’s performance played across several screens at Trump’s West Palm Beach Super Bowl party. Trump avoided attending the game in person, knowing he’d be loudly booed, live, in front of the entire planet. (And, yes, Donald Trump, charter member of the Epstein class, wants you to believe he cares about young children.)
Bad Bunny addressed the language question during a pre-game interview with a clever quip: “English is not my first language. But it’s okay, it’s not America’s first language either.” Forbes reports that it instantly went viral.
Former Trump Surgeon General Jerome Adams posted a little Super Bowl history lesson for anyone on X needing one, including his former boss.