The president says he’s never heard of Bad Bunny. That tracks.
Donald Trump told Newsmax this week he had “never heard of” the Puerto Rican megastar headlining next year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said. “I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s ridiculous.”
That’s a curious stance toward one of the most streamed artists in the world — three straight years atop Spotify, six chart-topping albums, and a world tour that sells out in minutes. Then again, Trump has a gift for turning ignorance into identity.
Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, didn’t seem surprised. His career has been a long, rhythmic rebuke to the paper-towel presidency — that image seared into memory from 2017, when Trump tossed rolls of Bounty into a Puerto Rican crowd after Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 people.
Bunny has been replying ever since.
In 2017, he performed at a hurricane relief concert wearing a shirt that read, ‘Eres Twitero o Presidente?’ — “Are you a Tweeter or a President?” In 2024, when a Trump-rally comic called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage,” Bunny shared Kamala Harris’ post condemning the remark, reminding fans that Trump “offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
His new video, “Nuevayol,” opens with the Statue of Liberty draped in a Puerto Rican flag. A Trump-like voice on the radio apologizes to immigrants — Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Cubans — before dissolving into static. It’s mock repentance with a beat.
So when Trump allies erupted over the NFL choosing Bunny for the Super Bowl, the music industry just shrugged.
Corey Lewandowski, now a Homeland Security adviser, joked that ICE agents might “attend” the halftime show. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promised to send immigration officials to Levi’s Stadium, calling the NFL “weak.”
Bad Bunny, meanwhile, keeps playing his own field. His sixth album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), a love letter to Puerto Rico, sat atop the Billboard 200 for weeks. He sings mostly in Spanish, which may be his most subversive act in a country where even empathy gets translated before it’s believed.
In a September interview, he explained why his current world tour skips the United States. “There were many reasons,” he told I-D Magazine, “but one was, like, (expletive) ICE could be outside my concert.”
That wasn’t paranoia.
The irony is that their feud feels inevitable; the loudest voice in politics meeting the loudest voice in music. Both built empires on volume. Both understand performance. One plays stadiums. The other plays the country.
But only one does it for joy.
Bad Bunny’s work drips with affection for the Caribbean that raised him. Trump’s politics run on grievance. Bunny wants to move the crowd. Trump wants to move the goalposts.
Their clash says less about music than about how culture changes power, and how power, when it loses rhythm, mistakes silence for dominance.
In truth, they need each other. Every rebel requires a tyrant. Every tyrant needs a soundtrack.
When Trump feigns ignorance of Bunny, he’s doing what he always does — elevating the opposition by pretending it doesn’t exist.
Next February, the world will watch a Spanish-language halftime show in California — dancers, horns, verses — while the president scowls from somewhere safe and soundproof.
He’ll say he never heard of Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny will make sure that he does.
