“God bless America—Sea Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Brasíl, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panamá, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Hondura’, El Salvador, Guatemala, México, Cuba, República Dominicana, Jamaica, Haití, las Antillas, United States, Canadá. And my motherland, mi patria: Puerto Rico. Seguimo’ aquí.”

I sat in my basement with eyes wide open as a crowd of people holding flags of all of the American countries, including the United States, followed Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny through the Super Bowl LX halftime show set, laden with Latin-style restaurants, food stands, power lines, legally-binding marriages and people dressed as bushes. Bad Bunny then held up a football, with the words “Together, We Are America” printed along the side. The Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. lit up with black and white billboards stating in bold, capital letters, “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

As Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, led the crowd of flags, he listed off every country in America. North America, Central America, South America (those two typically being grouped as “Latin America”), and the Caribbean were all represented here. He capped it off with, “and my motherland, mi patria: Puerto Rico. Seguimo’ aquí.”

Translation: “My homeland, Puerto Rico. We’re still here.”

The lead single from his newest and Grammy-winning album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (or DTMF for short), then signaled the end of Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance.

Now, I’m not a Spanish speaker. I don’t know a lick of Spanish or Portuguese. I’m very much white. But I’m also American, and watching the Super Bowl, along with its halftime show, is a tradition that’s baked into me like BBQs and fireworks on the Fourth of July (difference being, I hate being near fireworks). Granted, there were some English elements, whether that was Bad Bunny speaking a couple English phrases or Lady Gaga making a surprise appearance to sing a salsa remix of “Die With a Smile,” but most of the 13-minute halftime show was dedicated to Bad Bunny’s predominantly Spanish-language catalog.

I’d never listened to Bad Bunny’s music before the halftime show, so I was going in virtually blind. I knew some of his collaborations, specifically “I Like It” with Cardi B, but I had never listened to DTMF, or any of his other Grammy-nominated albums or songs, for which he has been nominated for at least one award for the last seven Grammy Awards ceremonies.

Of course, I must address the elephant in the room: the sheer backlash from the NFL’s announcement of Bad Bunny headlining the 60th Super Bowl halftime show.

“Please someone do something!” … “Only rapping, G-strings and twerking.” … “Since Jay-Z was hired by the NFL, another white person will never be allowed to perform.” … “Their refusal to allow a white performer … is the actual racism here.”

Believe it or not, these are actual people reacting to the headline, “Bad Bunny revealed as Super Bowl 2026 halftime performer,” posted online at the New York Post on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. Real comments. Real reactions. After the show, U.S. President Donald Trump went on Truth Social (his own social media platform) to complain:

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! […] This ‘Show’ is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country [sic] … there is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, it will get great reviews from the Fake News Media, because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.”

In response, and protest, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the conservative non-profit organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, announced that they would be presenting an “alternative” to the NFL’s halftime show, titled the “All-American Halftime Show.” It was later announced that Kid Rock would headline this counter-program, alongside country musicians Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert and Gabby Barrett, among other guest appearances.

As the Seattle Seahawks’ Dark Side defense was shutting down #10 quarterback Drake Maye left and right, both halftime shows were gearing up for battle. In one corner, was the Apple Music-sponsored halftime show on NBC, with over 125 million concurrent viewers. In the other corner, was TPUSA’s All-American Halftime Show. Who will come out on top?

And…there was definitely a clear winner. And it wasn’t Kid Rock.

After crunching the numbers, Apple Music announced that their Bad Bunny-led Super Bowl LX halftime show was the most-watched halftime show in history, clocking in at over 135 million viewers according to NBC. On the other side of the aisle, TPUSA’s official live stream on YouTube hovered around four to five million concurrent viewers throughout, not counting other live streams like those on Rumble and Facebook, or audience members live streaming from their phones in the stadium.

So how was the All-American Halftime Show? Is it, at all, comparable to Bad Bunny’s set?

I’m a bit biased here, but this is an opinion piece after all. I thought Bad Bunny ran laps around Kid Rock and company, just based on the atmosphere alone. Again, I’m biased: I’m nearly 18 years old, part of Gen Z, not a country music listener and I enjoy the higher production value of the NFL/Apple Music’s halftime shows. I’m not TPUSA’s target audience, and that’s okay. They catered towards the “true American patriots” (whatever that means) who wanted an all-English show with grassroots musicians strumming a 6-string steel guitar whilst carrying a strong spirit.

Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, got into his own bit of controversy on the left side of the aisle shortly after he was announced to be headlining TPUSA’s counterprogramming, adjacent to the criticism Bad Bunny received. The big “gotcha” of this controversy was a lyric derived from Kid Rock’s 1997 track “Cool, Daddy Cool.”

“Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see // Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory)”

In a world where the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein Library is over three million documents long and Donald Trump’s name gets more hits than Jesus Christ in the Holy Bible (another big “gotcha” for Democrats, but I digress), this lyric made waves across social media. Do with that information what you will.

In contrast, Bad Bunny’s halftime presence was criticized for being “un-American,” especially in the wake of the Trump administration ramping up operations for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, even stated that ICE agents would be present at the big game. During his speech at the 68th Grammy Awards, where he accepted the award of Album of the Year for DTMF, Bad Bunny said, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ICE out. We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans.”

Clearly, Bad Bunny rebukes the “un-American” trope, but I really don’t think the message got across to most people, especially those on the right side of the aisle. See, I mentioned that Bad Bunny, after saying “God bless America” in plain English, listed off all American countries, including the United States, while he himself was holding a Puerto Rican flag, a symbol of his homeland. While Puerto Rico is not a recognized U.S. state, it is a U.S. territory. In fact, its governor, Jenniffer González Colón, is actually a strong Trump ally and supports many of his policies and plans to adopt a handful of them onto the island.

Currently, Puerto Rico is in this sort of “tug-of-war” situation on whether it wants to become an independent, sovereign nation detached from the U.S., or to become a part of the larger United States as the 51st state. While there’s been many attempts by Puerto Rico’s government to attain statehood, they’ve proven that it’s a standstill for the ages.

And that’s where we land in the controversy of Bad Bunny. His status as a U.S. citizen is overshadowed by the fact that he’s not from the continental United States.

…His status as a U.S. citizen is overshadowed by the fact that he’s not white and he speaks a non-English language. And unfortunately, that’s the truth.

Let’s just look at the past ten Super Bowl halftime shows. Four of the last ten headliners have been non-U.S. citizens: Rhianna (Barbados, 2023), The Weeknd (Canada, 2021), Shakira (Colombia, 2020) and all members of Coldplay (England, 2016). In fact, Bad Bunny actually made a guest appearance in 2020 alongside Shakira, rapping to Cardi B’s 2018 track “I Like It.” Spanish at the Super Bowl isn’t anything new, at all. So, why is it a problem now?

I really don’t have an answer to that. I’m not going to say, “well, it’s Donald Trump’s tyrannical rhetoric that set this whole thing off,” because that’s blatantly false. Does Trump have some influence over people’s perception of celebrities? Sure. But Trump was still president in February 2020, when Bad Bunny made his halftime debut. Trump, in his usual fashion, still criticized the 2020 performance, shaming the NFL for choosing Shakira and Jennifer Lopez as performers, somewhat in the same style as when he criticized the NFL and halftime show executive producer Roc Nation (operated by Jay-Z) for choosing Bad Bunny. But why is it such a big deal, six years later, where Latin American musicians are once again being showcased on the national stage?

As I was writing this, I opened Instagram on my phone. The first post on my feed was a clip from Piers Morgan Uncensored, a YouTube talk show hosted by British broadcaster Piers Morgan. Attorney and political commentator Megyn Kelly was a guest, stating, “to get up there and perform the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America. […] This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country, not for the Latinos, not for one small group, but for the country. We don’t need a Black national anthem, we don’t need…a non-English performer and we don’t need an ICE or America hater featured as our primetime entertainment.”

Morgan then tried to debate her claims. “What is the national language, officially, of the United States of America?” Kelly responded almost instantaneously: English. Morgan then argued by stating that the U.S. has no official, national language.

(Note: Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 declaring English to be the official language of the United States. But, since this wasn’t a Congressional declaration or passed as a law, English is technically not a “de jure” language, which means a national language that is recognized by a law or constitution of a nation. The United States does not have a law denoting any specific language.)

In my opinion, Kelly’s contrast of “this is supposed to be a unifying event for the country” to “we don’t need a non-English performer” is a complete slap in the face to the diversity we have in the United States of America. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, 57.8% of the population is White, 18.7% are of Hispanic or Latino origin and 12.1% are Black and African American. The population of the United States is roughly 342 million people. 57.8% of 342 million is about 198 million, 18.7% is about 64 million and 12.1% is about 41 million. 

In 2019, it was estimated that about 42 million people speak Spanish instead of English at home in the U.S. That’s over 12% of the general population. Way more than just a dent that conservatives seem to think Spanish-speakers are to the general population.

Republicans are going as far as to request a formal inquiry into the NFL and NBC for broadcasting “obscene and indecent” content from the halftime show, citing sexual imagery and suggestive choreography. But that’s not the halftime show that I watched.

Near the middle of his 13-minute set, Bad Bunny spoke in Spanish to the camera. “Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. Y si hoy estoy aquí en el Super Bowl 60, es porque nunca, nunca dejé de creer en mí. Tú también debería’, tú también deberías de creer en ti. Vales más de lo que piensa’, créeme. Je.”

Translation: “My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. And if I’m here today at the Super Bowl 60, it’s because I never, never stopped believing in myself. You should too, you should believe in yourself. You’re worth more than you think, trust me.”

And then later, to end the set, Bad Bunny sang “DtMF,” jumping and partying with his fellow performers as they sang the lyrics of the track, making their way off the field.

“Debí tirar más fotos de cuando te tuve // Debí darte más besos y abrazos las veces que pude // Ey, ojalá que los míos nunca se muden // Y si hoy me emborracho, pues, que me ayuden”

Mind you, I didn’t know any of his music. I didn’t know what any of this meant. Later, when I opened social media, the English lyrics came across my feed almost instantly: I should’ve taken more pictures when I had you, I should’ve given you more kisses and hugs the times that I could, I hope my people never move and if I get drunk today, well, that they help me.

That’s the halftime show that I watched. A story about family, community, love and culture, all wrapped up in 13 minutes. Bad Bunny climbed on power lines, signifying the power outages and faulty grids of Puerto Rico, and an homage to Hurricane Maria that killed nearly three-thousand people in 2017. Several small businesses were represented, including Villa’s Tacos in Los Angeles, and a couple who invited Bad Bunny to their wedding as a joke ended up being invited to tie the knot on stage during the show. I didn’t see sexual innuendos and suggestive imagery; I saw a wholesome coming-together story. I really don’t understand how people are blind to this.

And that’s the thing, I don’t think people are…they’re just not interested in seeing a community that’s not theirs, because I’ve never been in a suburban neighborhood that has as much community and love for each other. That’s just how Latino culture is, and it’s beautiful to see it represented, even if I’m not close to that community at all. I would absolutely love to see more representation on the national stage, since our country has such a rich, diverse culture. While yes, over half of the U.S. population primarily speaks English, there’s an entire other half of the population that doesn’t. The United States isn’t a white, colonized nation, it’s a place for people to congregate and share together as a United States.

That’s what I saw that night, as the TPUSA “All-American Halftime Show” was playing on the upstairs TV above me. But what was truly “All-American” to me was the representation of all of the Americas, and that’s a new level of patriotism: one that’s accepting and welcoming of all Americans, whether they carry the red-white-and-blue, or the sky-blue or the green-and-yellow.