Hours after Bad Bunny wrapped his Super Bowl LX halftime show at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, conservative commentators began circulating English translations of the rapper's Spanish-language lyrics — and the reaction was swift. What millions of American viewers heard as an upbeat, foreign-language spectacle read, in translation, as something far less family-friendly.

Conservative commentator Megan Basham posted screenshots of the translated lyrics on social media, describing them as the most obscene ever performed at a Super Bowl halftime. Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet didn't mince words either:

"Worse than I realized. Pure degeneracy."

According to the Daily Mail, the backlash erupted on the evening of February 8 and into the early hours of February 9, spreading across X and other platforms as users who took the time to look up what Bad Bunny was actually saying reacted with a mixture of shock and disgust. One user admitted to "clutching pearls" after reading the translations, noting the lyrics lacked any "subtlety" or "class." Another put it more bluntly: "Language barriers do a lot of heavy lifting."

That line deserves to sit for a moment. Because that's the real story here — not that a performer used explicit lyrics, which happens constantly in American pop culture, but that the language gap functioned as a shield. Millions of families watched a halftime show with content they'd never have tolerated in English, and the NFL banked on them not knowing the difference.

The Show the NFL Wanted You to See

The production itself was a sprawling affair. The field was transformed into a sugarcane setting evoking Puerto Rico. Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Cardi B, Karol G, Jessica Alba, and Pedro Pascal all appeared. Bad Bunny held a football with the words "Together, we are America" on it, listed countries across North and South America, and placed his hand on a young boy's head before handing him a Grammy. A message on the big screen read: "The only thing more powerful than hate is love."

Viewers initially speculated the boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old reportedly detained by ICE agents the previous month. The article clarified that it was a young actor. But the staging made the political intent unmistakable — Bad Bunny, described as a vocal opponent of Trump's ICE agency, turned America's biggest television event into an advocacy platform wrapped in sentimentality.

Initial reports suggested the performance drew 135.4 million viewers, potentially surpassing Kendrick Lamar's 133.3 million from the prior year — though those figures hadn't been officially confirmed by the NFL. The game itself, a 29–13 Seattle Seahawks victory over the New England Patriots, was almost an afterthought.

President Trump Weighs In

President Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday evening, delivering a characteristically blunt assessment:

"Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World."

He called the performance "absolutely terrible" and said there was "nothing inspirational" about it. But his sharpest line cut to the cultural question at the heart of the controversy:

"It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn't represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence."

Trump also connected the show's tone to the country's broader trajectory, calling it a "slap in the face" to a nation he said was "setting new standards and records every single day — including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History." He predicted — correctly, as it turned out — that the media would shower the performance with praise regardless.

"There is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, it will get great reviews from the Fake News Media, because they haven't got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD."

The Culture War Defense

Supporters pushed back predictably. Progressive commentator Christopher Webb questioned why conservatives were fixated on lyric translations rather than broader themes of marriage, family, small business, and community that he claimed the show celebrated. Some fans called it "fun, upbeat, & more patriotic than MAGA understands," and praised it for "showing off the culture, family, & togetherness."

Conservative pundit Liz Wheeler dismantled Webb's framing by challenging him to identify which specific lyrics celebrated any of those values. It's a fair question — and one that Webb's defenders never seem to answer directly. The trick is always to gesture at vibes and aesthetics while ignoring what was actually said on stage.

Basham, meanwhile, acknowledged that some lyrics were altered for the broadcast — but insisted portions remained intact. She pushed back hard against critics who accused her of attacking Puerto Rican culture:

"Absolutely sick. And I'm sure that's why I have some Puerto Ricans in my mentions upset that the media in the NFL is pretending that this is representative of Puerto Rican culture."

That's an important distinction. Criticizing explicit lyrics performed for a family audience isn't an attack on Puerto Rican culture — it's a defense of it. Reducing a rich, centuries-old cultural tradition to one rapper's sexually graphic music is the actual insult. The people making that conflation aren't defending Puerto Rico. They're using it as a shield.

The Double Standard No One Wants to Discuss

Basham also noted the deeper irony — that some professing Christians were actively encouraging families to embrace the performance. She wrote that she was "disturbed by claims that kids would 'get a kick out of hearing this Spanish.'" The assumption that foreign language equals harmless fun tells you everything about how seriously American institutions take content standards when diversity is the packaging.

Consider the logic: if these lyrics had been performed in English, the FCC complaints would have crashed servers. Parents would have been furious. The NFL would have issued an apology before the post-game press conference ended. But because the language barrier provided plausible deniability, the league got to have it both ways — edgy and family-friendly, provocative and inclusive, explicit and untouchable.

As one user wrote: "The content doesn't change just because the language does."

What Comes Next

Following the performance, Bad Bunny removed all posts from his social media accounts, including his profile photo — a move that, for a performer with more than 52 million Instagram followers, speaks louder than any press statement. The Daily Mail reported reaching out to his representatives for comment with no response.

Meanwhile, Turning Point USA held its own alternative halftime show on Sunday, headlined by Kid Rock — a pointed counter-programming move that underscored just how fractured America's cultural commons has become. Two halftime shows for two Americas, each convinced the other has lost the plot.

The NFL chose Bad Bunny, knowing exactly what it was getting — a politically outspoken performer with explicit material, performing in a language most of the audience doesn't speak, on the biggest stage in American entertainment. That wasn't an accident. It was a calculation. And the calculation was that Americans wouldn't bother to translate what their children were hearing.

Millions of them did. And they didn't like what they found.