During his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, Bad Bunny made cheeky comments about the criticism he's facing after being named the Super Bowl LX halftime performer.
Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) brought up the controversy surrounding the news of his upcoming halftime performance.
“I’m very happy and I think everyone is happy about it, even Fox News,” he joked.
He played a clips 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,” Bunny added before delivering a lengthy message to his supporters in Spanish.
Bunny wrapped up the message, and his speech, with a notice to prep viewers for the Super Bowl.
“If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn,” he concluded.
Bunny’s announcement that he’d be performing at the Super Bowl came after he said he’d previously excluded the U.S. from his tour due to the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) coming to his shows.
"I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the U.S.," he said in an interview with i-D last month.
"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."
In an official statement after the NFL’s reveal that he’d be performing at the show, Bad Bunny expressed his excitement for performing.
"What I'm feeling goes beyond myself," he said. "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.”
After the announcement, Corey Lewandowski, who’s an adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, suggested that ICE would have a presence at the Super Bowl.
"There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else,” Lewandowski said on The Benny Show podcast.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also appeared on the podcast and dropped threats about ICE at the Super Bowl, saying federal agents would be “all over that place” and have every intention 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.
After The Benny Show’s host asked Noem if she had a response to the NFL perhaps trying to “send a message” to President Donald Trump with Bad Bunny’s performance, Noem responded with a diss to the sports organization.
“They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us,” Noem said. “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.”