Puerto Rican music sensation Bad Bunny is having a landmark year, but it hasn’t been universally accepted.
His latest announcement, that he’ll be the halftime act at the Super Bowl, has been met with mixed reviews, largely divided by politics. As expected, President Donald Trump isn’t happy with the NFL’s choice.
In an interview on Benny Johnson’s web interview series “The Benny Show,” Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski issued a stark warning to the NFL regarding their decision to tap Bad Bunny to perform at the Super Bowl.
Here’s an excerpt, via Variety:
When Johnson asked Lewandowski if “ICE will have enforcement at the Super Bowl” where Bad Bunny is performing, the Trump advisor responded: “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else. We will find you and apprehend you and put you in a detention facility and deport you. Know that is a very real situation under this administration, which is contrary to how it used to be.”
“It’s so shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much to represent them at the Halftime Show,” Lewandowski said about Bad Bunny. “We should be trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. There are plenty of great bands and entertainment people who could be playing at that show that would be bringing people together and not separating them.”
Bad Bunny’s 30-day residency in Puerto Rico was a success. It spurred a 31st performance called “Una Mas,” or “One More,” which was livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video.
Afterwards, Amazon Music revealed that the livestream for the concert “shattered” viewership records for a single-artist performance, according to The Rolling Stone.
Bad Bunny will now take the show on the road on an international tour, which excludes the United States because of its divisive ICE policies.
“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the US, and none of them were out of hate—I’ve performed there many times,” he said in a recent interview with British magazine i-D. “All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent. I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the U.S. But specifically, for a residency here in Puerto Rico, when we are an unincorporated 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, f—ing ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”