Washington: When Bad Bunny takes to the stage for today’s history-making Super Bowl half-time show, the world will be glued to their televisions to see what he has to say about Donald Trump’s America.
The outspoken Puerto Rican rapper is never shy about his political opinions; last week, alongside other stars, he used his acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards to protest against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“We are not savages, we are not animals, we are not aliens – we are humans, and we are Americans,” he said to applause. “ICE out.”
At the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny – whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – will command arguably the biggest stage in the world. Expectations are high that he will use that platform to send a pointed political message.
Bad Bunny is almost designed in a lab to irritate MAGA conservatives. Widely considered the most successful Latino rapper of all time, he performs only in Spanish, dabbles in drag culture and has described his sexuality as fluid. He excluded the US from his most recent tour out of fear that concerts might be targeted by ICE.
Many conservatives were furious when the NFL announced Bad Bunny’s appearance last year. Trump called the choice “absolutely ridiculous”. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know why they’re doing it – it’s, like, crazy,” he told Newsmax.
Commentators also had a hard time processing the news. “Don’t be mad that we have a cross-dresser who doesn’t speak English doing the half-time show because if Kamala won, he would’ve been a cabinet member,” said Jimmy Failla, a New York taxi driver who became a comedian and Fox News host.
So outraged is the MAGA right that it has decided to produce an alternative. The All-American Halftime Show, hosted by Turning Point USA, will air on several conservative networks at the same time as the official half-time entertainment.
Billed as a celebration of faith, family and freedom, it boasts go-to Trump act Kid Rock as the headliner, and a number of country singers. Kid Rock (real name Robert James Ritchie) has a long association with the president, having performed at the 2024 Republican National Convention and Trump’s pre-inauguration victory rally.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated the televisions at Trump’s Super Bowl viewing party – at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida – would probably be tuned to the latter. “I think the president would much prefer a Kid Rock performance over Bad Bunny,” she said last week.
While Turning Point’s rival half-time show will not match the real one for spectacle or eyeballs, its existence says a lot about the division of modern America – even on a day that would ordinarily bring the country together.
Bad Bunny is not the only one set to bring politics to this Super Bowl. World Without Exploitation, an activist group fighting human trafficking and sexual exploitation, will run an advertisement featuring survivors of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
In the ad, several survivors appear with tape over their mouths or holding photographs of their younger selves. They call on Attorney-General Pam Bondi to release the remaining documents from the so-called Epstein Files; despite more than 3 million pages being published, it is believed there are another 3 million that have not been made public.
“It’s the most important ad of the day,” said Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives oversight committee. “You don’t ‘move on’ from the largest sex-trafficking ring in the world. You expose it.”
Maxwell is scheduled to appear before Congress via video link from prison on Monday, US time, although she is expected to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to silence.
Super Bowl ads are among the most watched in the world, with the slots commanding fees of $US8 million ($11 million) for 30 seconds.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.