It’s been widely reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) criticized the choice to have global superstar Bad Bunny headline the upcoming 2026 Super Bowl halftime show in February — and now, experts say his choice of words was pretty telling.
On Tuesday, reporter Pablo Manríquez asked Johnson to share his reaction to the selection of the Puerto Rican artist, to which the House Speaker quickly responded: “I didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was, but it sounds like a terrible decision, in my view, from what I’m hearing.”
When Manríquez pressed further, asking Johnson to elaborate, the Louisiana Republican said: “It sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience, and I think, you know, there’s so many eyes on the Super Bowl, a lot of young, impressionable children.”
Johnson then suggested that 1980s country star Lee Greenwood, who’s 82 years old and was born in California, would be a better fit to perform at the big game.
“I think, in my view, you would have Lee Greenwood, or role models, doing that,” he said. “Not somebody like this.”
Many in the MAGA world have evidently been distressed ever since Bad Bunny — who has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, his administration’s immigration policies and MAGA’s overall anti-immigrant rhetoric — was announced as the headliner of the halftime show.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was apparently quite offended by Bad Bunny’s opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live” last week. The artist spoke in both English and Spanish and quipped that non-Spanish speakers had four months until the Super Bowl to learn what he said.
Greene, in response, wrote on X that she wants her bill to make English the official language of America to be signed into law. She called Bad Bunny’s performance “perverse” and “unwanted.”
Trump, for his part, called the decision to choose Bad Bunny “crazy” when asked about it on Monday.
And Johnson’s recent dig about Bad Bunny not having a “broader audience” is perplexing; the “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” artist is a history-making, three-time Grammy winner. He was named Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally for three consecutive years.
Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) joined others on X, formerly Twitter, to charge that Johnson’s “broader audience” quip had lot to do with the fact that Bad Bunny’s songs are performed primarily in Spanish, and less to do with his success as a global star.
“Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio belongs on stage, sharing his art with us,” she wrote on X on Wednesday. “Just be honest and say your problem with him is that he is Latino and Spanish-speaking.”
Spanish is the most commonly spoken non-English language in America.
As Jaime Dominguez, a political scientist and associate professor of Instruction at Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, previously told HuffPost: “The Spanish language is as American as apple pie and more so in particular states that have a large concentration of Latinos.”
Saying an entertainer of color doesn’t have a broad audience can reveal a lot about one’s worldview.
Gladys Vega via Getty Images
Bad Bunny photographed during a performance onstage on September 20, 2025 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University, said that Johnson is an “unabashed lackey” of Trump, who is “desperately trying to reimagine America as a homogenous and white refuge for Western and Christian civilization.”
“He ignores the statistics that white Americans, once the majority, are slowly becoming a minority,” they said.
Sarma said that they believe Johnson’s remark, which suggests that Bad Bunny isn’t mainstream, refers to “only to white, Fox news watching, MAGA Christians.”
“The language is not even coded anymore,” they later added. “The only audience for MAGA spokespeople such as Johnson are members of the MAGA cult.”
Sarma said that MAGA rhetoric — like the notion that Bad Bunny doesn’t have a “broader audience” — is “harmful.”
“And more frighteningly, it’s intended to hurt and to incite,” they said.
“Trump and Johnson are mere demagogues who, like notorious cult figures of the past, control their constituents with misleading and invented data, and deploy dangerous discourse to maintain power and megalomania,” they later continued.
“It is increasingly obvious to non-MAGA Americans that Johnson and others MAGA minions seek to pander to MAGA loyalists and that terms like ‘broader audience’ or mainstream refer only to them, and to no one else,” they added.
Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business and public policy at the University of Southern California, emphasized that the NFL “recognizes that Bad Bunny, a megastar musician and Calvin Klein model, appeals to a diversity of audiences in the U.S. and around the globe.”
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“It is a brilliant business decision that will surely attract more Super Bowl watchers from other countries — [and] as usual, millions of Americans will tune in, too,” he said.
“But Johnson’s implicit biases compel him to implicitly associate mass appeal with Americans who are most proximal to himself and most reflective of the demographic composition of his political party,” he continued.
“One consequence of white superiority is its senseless disregard for other cultures,” he added.
