In a wave of misinformation following the NFL’s announcement that Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny will headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February 2026, numerous false claims have circulated on social media platforms, despite the artist’s clear confirmation that he will indeed perform.<\/p>\n
The initial announcement sparked criticism from conservative commentators and MAGA influencers who took issue with Bad Bunny’s past criticisms of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and his Spanish-language music catalog. However, this backlash quickly evolved into an ecosystem of fabricated stories claiming the performance had been canceled or was in jeopardy.<\/p>\n
Among the most egregious falsehoods is a claim shared by a Philippines-based Facebook account with one million followers suggesting that Bad Bunny had withdrawn from the performance. The post falsely attributed a quote to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stating, “It was the only choice \u2014 otherwise, deportation would have been on the table.” Official transcripts from Leavitt’s briefings contain no such statement. When actually asked about the performance, Leavitt simply declined to speak on the president’s behalf.<\/p>\n
The deportation claim is particularly misleading as Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Mart\u00ednez Ocasio, is an American citizen from Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, making deportation legally impossible.<\/p>\n
Another fabrication gaining traction claims that Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey threatened to pull a “$100 million sponsorship” if Bad Bunny performed. This assertion is demonstrably false on multiple levels: there is no record of such a statement from Quincey in media reports or company communications, and Coca-Cola isn’t even an official NFL sponsor.<\/p>\n
This fictitious Coca-Cola ultimatum then spawned additional false narratives involving celebrities supposedly criticizing Bad Bunny’s selection. Nearly identical posts appeared across platforms, merely swapping out celebrity names while maintaining the same text structure. These posts falsely claimed figures including Kelly Osbourne, Adam Sandler, Steven Tyler, Christian singer Brandon Lake, and Jon Bon Jovi had made identical statements opposing the rapper’s performance.<\/p>\n
The template for these fabricated quotes typically followed a format where the celebrity allegedly stated: “If Bad Bunny gets on stage, I’m going to stay home, turn on the TV, open a Coke, and laugh at that half-assed show. I’m not paying to see a guy in a dress perform.”<\/p>\n
Bad Bunny himself directly addressed the misinformation while hosting “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, stating unequivocally, “You may not know this, but I’m doing the Super Bowl halftime show, and I’m very happy.” During the same appearance, he cleverly responded to the controversy by featuring a video that edited together clips of Fox News hosts to create a message saying, “Bad Bunny is my favorite musician, and he should be the next president.”<\/p>\n
The NFL halftime show represents one of music’s most prestigious platforms, with performances reaching a global audience of over 100 million viewers. For Bad Bunny, who has broken numerous streaming records and helped bring Latin music into the global mainstream, the selection acknowledges his cultural impact and commercial success.<\/p>\n
The NFL and Bad Bunny’s management team have not officially responded to requests for comment regarding the spread of misinformation surrounding the performance announcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a wave of misinformation following the NFL’s announcement that Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny will headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February 2026, numerous false claims have circulated on social media platforms, despite the artist’s clear confirmation that he will indeed perform. The initial announcement sparked criticism from conservative commentators and MAGA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-false-claims"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5258,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions\/5258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/dis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}