{"id":197025,"date":"2025-10-08T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197025\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T07:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:58:07","slug":"house-speaker-johnson-knocks-bad-bunny-at-super-bowl-favors-lee-greenwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197025\/","title":{"rendered":"House Speaker Johnson Knocks Bad Bunny at Super Bowl, Favors Lee Greenwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHouse Speaker Mike Johnson has weighed in on the political debate over Bad Bunny<\/a> being booked to play the 2026 Super Bowl<\/a> halftime show, saying it was \u201ca terrible decision\u201d \u2014 echoing the beliefs of President Donald J. Trump, who already established his own antipathy toward Bad Bunny.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson did have some constructive input for who he believes should have been picked to perform by halftime producer Roc Nation: The Republican leader said \u201980s country star Lee Greenwood would have been America\u2019s clear and obvious preference, citing \u201ca broader audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked about the controversy outside House chambers, Johnson admitted that the globally popular artist who just hosted \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d over the weekend was not really on his radar, but said he knew it was a bad call anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t even know who Bad Bunny was. But it sounds like a terrible decision, in my view, from what I\u2019m hearing,\u201d Johnson said. Asked why, the speaker noted, \u201cIt sounds like he\u2019s not someone who appeals to a broader audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson added, \u201cAnd there are so many eyes on the Super Bowl \u2014 a lot of young, impressionable children.\u00a0And, in my view, you would have Lee Greenwood, or role models, doing that. Not somebody like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson did not mention, as some other Bad Bunny detractors have, that a bone of contention for some conservatives is that the Puerto Rican artist sings exclusively in Spanish. The singer also took flak from the right for recently saying that, following a record-breaking residency in Puerto Rico, he would not be bringing his tour to the continental United States any time soon because of the possibility that it would draw ICE raids on his crowds. That fear was all but confirmed when Trump administration officials said ICE would be at the Super Bowl in force, in response to Bad Bunny getting star billing.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Monday, the president took a stance much like Johnson\u2019s \u2014 likewise declaring that while he knew nothing about Bad Bunny, he knew his appearance would be a travesty nonetheless. Responding to a question from a NewsMax host who said \u201cthe NFL<\/a> just chose the Bad Bunny Rabbit, or whatever his name is,\u201d\u00a0Trump answered, \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of him. I don\u2019t know who he is. I don\u2019t know why they\u2019re doing it. It\u2019s crazy. \u2026 I think it\u2019s absolutely ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOther members of the administration have indicated they have a better idea who Bad Bunny is, and that it has affected plans for ICE to be out in force at the Super Bowl. After the halftime booking was announced, Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem both indicated agents would be deployed to the game to pick up undocumented migrants. Asked specifically about the NFL\u2019s Bad Bunny booking, Noem said: \u201cWell, they suck and we\u2019ll win, and God will bless us and we\u2019ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won\u2019t be able to sleep at night because they don\u2019t know what they believe. And they\u2019re so weak, we\u2019ll fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the encounter in the House hallways Tuesday, the speaker was asked the questions about Bad Bunny by Pablo Manr\u00edquez, who runs the immigrant news outlet Migrant Insider.<\/p>\n

\n\tBad Bunny has had more than 100 songs chart on the Hot 100 in the U.S., including the No. 1 single \u201cI Like It.\u201d His last four albums have all debuted at No. 1 on Billboard\u2019s U.S. album chart. The most recent, \u201cDeb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos,\u201d debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in January with 122,000 units, then climbed to No. 1 with 203,500 units the following week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"House Speaker Mike Johnson has weighed in on the political debate over Bad Bunny being booked to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[23632,49,48,361,75,514,19501],"class_list":{"0":"post-197025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-bad-bunny","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-super-bowl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}