A week after accepting one of three Grammy awards with an anti-ICE profundity, Bad Bunny headlined the Super Bowl LX halftime show Sunday night at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
The Puerto Rico-born singer and rapper, who performs almost exclusively in Spanish, staged a theatrical performance that featured elaborate set pieces and cinematic effects. At points, he was joined by Lady Gaga (who sang in English), Ricky Martin, and even a couple getting married. Towards the end of his 13-minute set, he shouted “God bless America” before running through a list of the countries that make up South, Central, and North America.
While no part of the show was as overtly political as his “ICE out” proclamation at the Grammys or his past outspokenness about cultural and political issues, even The New York Times admitted there are “many modes of political positioning” – ranging from “outright sloganeering” and “encoded messages” to “visual cues” and even “freedom and joy” – and all “were present during this performance.”
Meanwhile, more than five million viewers changed the channel when Bad Bunny took the stage, opting instead to tune into the “All-American Halftime Show” hosted by Turning Point USA. That counterprogramming was streamed across YouTube and Rumble and featured performances by Kid Rock, Lee Brice, Gabby Barrett, and Brantley Gilbert. It also included a tribute to the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk.
Megyn and her family opted to watch the Turning Point USA show, which she called “beautiful” in a post on X Sunday night. On Monday, she joined Piers Morgan on Piers Morgan Uncensored to discuss her issue with Bad Bunny being selected as the halftime show performer.
A Problematic Pick
Morgan argued that, “as a piece of theater,” Bad Bunny’s halftime performance was “just the most extraordinary kind of Broadway-on-steroids piece of theater” that “wasn’t remotely divisive politically.” In fact, he thought there was an underlying message of “love” that normally “people on the conservative right would applaud.”
In Megyn’s view, the criticism of Bad Bunny has nothing to do with what he did or didn’t do Sunday night. “It wasn’t about what he was actually going to do during the middle of the Super Bowl performance… It’s about him being chosen as the Super Bowl performer [as] somebody who has been an outspoken critic, of course, of the Trump administration and of America and our ‘anti-immigrant’ policies,” she explained. “This was long before the current controversy over ICE.”
And while Bad Bunny seemingly did not sing about anything overtly anti-American, Megyn said there is no way for most Americans to know for sure. “I don’t think Bad Bunny used his appearance to bash America, but I can’t be sure because I didn’t see any subtitles on his Spanish-language performance,” she noted. “To get up there and perform the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America. Who gives a damn that we have 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States; we have 310 million who don’t speak a lick of Spanish.”
“This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country – not for the Latinos, not for one small group, but for the country,” Megyn added. We don’t need a ‘Black National Anthem,’ we don’t need a Spanish-speaking… performer, and we don’t need an ICE- or America-hater featured as our primetime entertainment.”
‘Too Divisive’
Morgan suggested that Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has a uniquely American story. “He is the son of a truck driver and a teacher, born in Puerto Rico… He is the most successful artist in the world, is the most-streamed artist globally on Spotify for four consecutive years, nearly 20 billion downloads in 2025 alone. He’s won Grammys. He’s won everything,” he explained. “He is a fantastically successful American story… And isn’t the fact that he ends up performing at the halftime show is exactly the kind of journey that America was founded on, which is a guy that comes from very little… actually makes it to the biggest pinnacle.”
While Morgan said he “can’t think of a compelling reason why” Bad Bunny wouldn’t headline the Super Bowl halftime show, Megyn said the reason is simple: “He’s too divisive.”
“No one would begrudge him his personal success story. Good for him. Great. We love that here in America… but there are certain things that we expect of the people who are representing us when they’re overseas as Olympic athletes or when they’re in the middle of the Super Bowl,” Megyn continued. “The last thing we want is someone who is a harsh partisan who we know can’t stand the country.”
“There are millions of people out there who have very strong political opinions, but they don’t voice them publicly because they realize they’re in a line of work where that could be alienating to their customer base. The same is true for these performers,” Megyn said. “If you want to be super outspoken, if you want to be a Jane Fonda, then go for it. But don’t expect yourself to be placed in the middle of what’s supposed to be a nonpartisan event and be a so-called unifier.”
To that point, Megyn said the ‘patriotic’ moment from the performance was anything but. “And he wasn’t totally patriotic at that event. He ended it by saying, ‘God bless America’ and then listed all the countries in all of the Americas, which is not how we here in the United States view the USA,” she added. “We actually do believe in American exceptionalism, and we believe we actually do have a higher claim to morality than some of the countries he was listing, like Mexico.”
Changing the Channel
Ultimately, Megyn said Bad Bunny and fellow outspoken U.S. critics Green Day, who performed on the field before kickoff, are not what a large portion of football fans wanted to see on Sunday. “That’s not representative of what the Heartland wants to see,” she said. “And the Heartland always gets the middle finger from people like Jay-Z [and] Roger Goodell, who should know better.”
This is also why, in her view, the TPUSA show was such a success. “That is why you had probably closer to 10 million people turning the channel and turning to the Turning Point event, which was pro-American, which was absolutely beautiful, which had several references to God and faith and this country, which had a tribute to Charlie Kirk at the end of it and talked about Jesus and how he can change your life,” Megyn noted. “That is what America is all about.”
“What we want is somebody up there to celebrate how freaking special this country is,” Megyn concluded, “not a bunch of people who can’t stand us and over, what, our desire to get illegal immigrants who are raping and molesting our children out of our country? That’s all ICE is doing.”