'Cry Baby' Donald Trump Slams Bad Bunny's 'Terrible' Super Bowl Show as 'One Of The Worst Ever'

The half-time show is meant to be a communal pause: a few minutes when even the most hard-bitten football purists give in, glance up, and let spectacle do what sport sometimes cannot — pull strangers into the same moment. On Sunday night at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, that moment belonged to Bad Bunny, and it arrived loud, Spanish-first, and unapologetically Puerto Rican.​

Donald Trump wasn't in the stands. He didn't need to be. Within minutes, he was doing what he so often does: turning a cultural event into a loyalty test, delivered in the unmistakable grammar of caps lock.

When Donald Trump Grades the Half-Time Show

'The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!' Trump wrote on Truth Social after Bad Bunny's performance. He went further, calling it 'a slap in the face' to the country, and complaining that 'nobody understands a word this guy is saying,' with particular outrage reserved for the dancing, which he described as 'disgusting,' especially for children watching.

There is a familiar rhythm to the condemnation: art as evidence, language as threat, and taste recast as patriotism. The striking part isn't that Trump disliked the set. Plenty of viewers dislike plenty of half-time shows every year, and then they move on. It's the insistence that a Spanish-language global star performing on an American stage somehow constitutes a national humiliation.​

And that, of course, is the point. Trump's politics have long thrived on the idea that 'America' is a narrow club with strict entry requirements — and that anything outside the approved soundtrack is suspect by default.​

Bad Bunny, Donald Trump and the Argument Over 'America'

Bad Bunny's performance leaned into Puerto Rican imagery and a wider message about belonging, with reports describing it as a love letter to his home and a plea for unity. One widely noted visual line — 'The only thing more powerful than hate is love' — landed like a deliberately placed rebuttal to the month-long grumbling that preceded the show.

If Trump's critique was about 'standards,' the NFL's own public posture pointed the other way. Commissioner Roger Goodell described Bad Bunny as 'one of the great artists in the world,' arguing that the platform is about uniting people and bringing them together through creativity.​

Then there was the parallel universe built for those who wanted a more explicitly 'patriotic' alternative. Turning Point USA organised what it billed as an 'All-American' half-time show, headlined by Kid Rock, as a counter-programme to the official spectacle.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was unusually candid about where the president's preferences sit, telling reporters: 'I think the president would much prefer a Kid Rock performance over Bad Bunny.'​​

The official game itself had its own storyline — Leavitt said Trump had 'wisely chosen not to make a prediction' for the Super Bowl LX match-up between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Still, the cultural contest was already decided in advance: one side treating the half-time show as an international stage, the other treating it as an audition for citizenship.​​

In a healthier political climate, none of this would matter much. A pop star performs, a president shrugs, and the world keeps spinning. But the Trump era doesn't do shrugs. It does symbols. It does tests of belonging. And it does the kind of anger that pretends it's protecting children when it's really policing identity.​

Netizens were quick to comment on Donald Trump's reaction to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl 2026 performance. 'This is petty and embarrassing. While Bad Bunny united an entire hemisphere on the world's biggest stage, Donald Trump responded with pointless hate. Culture moved forward. He stayed stuck — loud, bitter and irrelevant to the moment,' one X user wrote.

'Trump, only you got a problem with the show,' a second netizen said. 'Such a cry baby. You are the worst president in history,' another X user commented. 'Loved by millions, hated by a few loud voices. Sounds like a successful Super Bowl show to me!' a fourth netizen chimed in.

Bad Bunny, for his part, did not need to name Trump to expose what the outburst revealed. You could hear it in the panic over language, in the demand that culture must 'represent' a single definition of America, and in the weary predictability of a president trying to turn a few minutes of music into a grievance worth campaigning on.