Bad Bunny is one of the biggest acts in the world right now. The Puerto Rican rapper was 2025’s most-streamed artist on Spotify, and this week made Grammy Awards history by winning the first-ever Spanish-language album of the year. So it was no surprise for many music fans when it was announced in September that Bad Bunny would serve as the halftime show entertainment for Super Bowl LX on Sunday.
“What we really look at first and foremost is who’s the right artist for that moment,” NFL senior vice president and global head of major events Jon Barker said at the time. “And we absolutely 100 percent believe and know that Bad Bunny is the right artist for this moment, for this show. We’re already successful, having Bad Bunny a part of it.”
Some conservatives disagreed, with the group Turning Point USA announcing in October that it would host its own shadow halftime show. Dubbed “The All-American Halftime Show,” the group promised its counterprogramming would be “celebrating faith, family & freedom.” It dropped its full lineup earlier this week, featuring former Michigan man Kid Rock and a variety of other county performers, including Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert and Gabby Barrett.
“We’re approaching this show like David and Goliath,” Kid Rock said in a statement. “Competing with the pro football machine and a global pop superstar is almost impossible…or is it?” The show will air around the Super Bowl halftime on the Turning Point USA YouTube channel and outlets like right-wing One America News and the Christian TV network Trinity Broadcasting Network.
A since-deleted LinkedIn post by Tim Gortsema, president of the Grand Rapids Griffins professional hockey team, illuminated the appeal behind The All-American Halftime Show to some.
“What I won’t be watching will be this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show featuring Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny,” he wrote. “Specifically, I do not believe he models proper behavior for our youth, and I take issue with his crossdressing and sexually explicit lyrics (even if most of his songs are in Spanish.) Overall, I just think the NFL missed the mark with this year’s halftime show. In a nation that is already divided, the selection of Bad Bunny reinforces and widens this current divide.”
Bad Bunny has been critical of President Donald Trump, dissing him in his 2020 track “Compositor Del Año” as “un presidente mamabicho que no hace un pito” (“a useless president who doesn’t do a damn thing”). During his Grammy Award acceptance speeches, Bad Bunny criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and dedicated his win to “all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country to follow their dreams.” (The Super Bowl opening ceremony will feature punk band Green Day, who have also been critical of Trump.)
Gortsema continued, “I’m not saying the halftime performer needs to be MAGA or Pro-Trump. Instead, I would have liked the performer to at least be Pro-America. Despite our Nation’s flaws, I still believe that we are privileged to live in the greatest country on the planet.”
Apparently Gortsema and others are unaware that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, meaning that Puerto Ricans are considered U.S. citizens. (However, they are disenfranchised from federal elections and do not pay federal income taxes. In referendums Puerto Ricans have repeatedly voted in favor of becoming a U.S. state, but it’s up to the U.S. Congress to make that happen.)
And Kid Rock is laughable as a role model, drunkenly slurring as he ranted about Oprah Winfrey in his Nashville bar, shooting cases of Bud Light beer to protest its ad campaign with a transgender woman, and performing a song about raping girls in his 2001 track “Cool Daddy Cool”, singing, “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see/ Some say that’s statutory/ But I say it’s mandatory.”
It’s understandable that some Anglophones may be turned off by a Spanish-language act, but let’s remind that the lyrics to Kid Rock’s most famous song are: “Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang/ diggy-diggy-diggy said the boogie/ said up drop the boogie.” Whatever that means!
By the way, the U.S. is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.
The people organizing and tuning into “The All-American Halftime Show” are the ones who are being divisive and un-American, rejecting an artist because they are from a different culture. The “real America” is a multiracial melting pot, and people should be more open-minded.
The Super Bowl LX starts at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, where the Seattle Seahawks will take on the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. It is available to watch on NBC, Telemundo, and Universo.