During his Saturday Night Live opening monologue, Bad Bunny playfully addressed the backlash he’s been getting since being announced as the Super Bowl LX halftime show headliner.
The Latin superstar, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, didn’t shy away from the buzz surrounding the big news.
“I’m very happy, and I think everyone is happy about it — even Fox News,” he quipped, drawing laughs from the audience.
Bad Bunny didn’t hold back during his Saturday Night Live monologue, taking the stage with humor and confidence as he addressed the backlash following his announcement as the Super Bowl LX halftime show performer.
The global superstar, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, poked fun at the controversy by playing a clever edit of Fox News anchors spliced together to say, “Bad Bunny is my favorite musician, and he should be the next president.”
“I’m very excited to be doing the Super Bowl, and I know people all around the world are very happy,” he said, before switching to Spanish to deliver a heartfelt message to his fans. He closed out with a playful challenge: “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl announcement came not long after he revealed in an interview with i-D that he had previously avoided touring in the U.S. due to fears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) might show up at his concerts.
“I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the U.S.,” he said. “But specifically, for a residency here in Puerto Rico, when we are an incorporated territory of the U.S.… People from the U.S. could come here to see the show. Latinos and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here, or to any part of the world. But there was the issue of—like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”
After the NFL officially confirmed him as the halftime headliner, Bunny released a statement celebrating the moment. “What I’m feeling goes beyond myself,” he shared. “It’s for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown… this is for my people, my culture, and our history. Ve y dile a tu abuela, que seremos el HALFTIME SHOW DEL SUPER BOWL.”
The excitement, however, was met with political tension. Corey Lewandowski, an adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, suggested that ICE agents would have a presence at the Super Bowl, saying, “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem echoed similar sentiments during her appearance on The Benny Show, stating that federal agents would be “all over that place” to “enforce the law.”
“I have the responsibility for making sure that everybody [who] goes to the Super Bowl has the opportunity to enjoy it and to leave. And that’s what America is about,” she said.
When asked if she believed the NFL was sending a political message to President Donald Trump by booking Bad Bunny, Noem fired back with a blunt response: “They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us. We’ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won’t be able to sleep at night because they don’t know what they believe and they’re so weak. We’ll fix it.”
