Bad Bunny mocks backlash to his Super Bowl halftime gig on ‘SNL’

Bad Bunny mocks backlash to his Super Bowl halftime gig on "SNL." (NBC via CNN Newsource)

Bad Bunny, el primero presentador de la nueva temporada de ‘Saturday Night Live,’ tenía un mensaje para todos: “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”

During his monologue, the musician didn’t shy away from the backlash that stemmed from the recent announcement that he’d be the next Super Bowl’s halftime performer. In fact, he had a lot of fun with it, joking, “I think everybody’s happy about it – even Fox News.”

What followed was a collection of short clips featuring Fox News personalities, who in a spliced-together edit collectively said: “Bad Bunny is my favorite musician, and he should be the next president.”

He then addressed the audience in Spanish, expressing his excitement about doing the Super Bowl, adding, “I know that people all around the world who love my music are also happy.”

He continued: “More than just my achievement, it’s everyone’s achievement, proving that no one can ever erase or take away (Latinos’) mark and our contribution to this country.”

That’s when he returned to speaking English, encouraging those who didn’t understand his words to learn in the coming weeks.

Bad Bunny is fresh off a long residency of concerts solely performed in Puerto Rico — he went “on tour but at home,” as he put it to New York Magazine.

His run of shows brought hundreds of millions of dollars to Puerto Rico, economists estimated.

His January album, “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” which was his sixth solo album, has spent 38 weeks on the Billboard 200 list.

Despite Bad Bunny’s immense popularity, some US government officials and conservative media have tried to turn his Super Bowl appearance into a culture war, primarily over his anti-ICE statements. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, promised that ICE would be in attendance at the Super Bowl and said that “people should not be coming to the Super Bowl unless they’re law-abiding Americans who love this country.”

She went on to issue a tirade about the NFL itself: “Well, they suck and we’ll win, and God will bless us and 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.”

President Donald Trump — who has served himself as host of “Saturday Night Live” twice prior to his time in office — has complained about the show for years. Questions about whether his administration would try to take action against the late-night show at some point have started to swirl after it recently targeted late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

That speculation did little to deter “SNL” from having James Austin Johnson reprise his role as Trump in the Season 51 cold open in a sketch that also featured Weekend Update host Colin Jost as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

“I’m just here keeping my eye on ‘SNL,’ making sure they don’t do anything too mean about me, and they better be careful because I know late-night TV like the back of my hand,” Johnson as Trump said, holding up a discoloured hand.

He added at the end, “daddy’s watching.”

Next week on “SNL,” presumably: Amy Poehler and musical guest Role Model. And then, on October 18, Sabrina Carpenter does double duty as host and musical guest.