Republicans were already losing Latino support. Then Trump went after Bad Bunny
Donald Trump's success in attracting a broad range of Americans to vote Republican, including among the Latino community, was key to his presidential election victory in 2024. Now in 2026, Trump's distaste for the all-Spanish-language Super Bowl halftime performance by Bad Bunny — an American citizen from Puerto Rico — suggests scoring points with Latino voters is no longer a high priority for the president. "Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting," Trump said in a social media post on Sunday. He called the halftime show "an affront to the Greatness of America." Polls suggest Trump has been losing Latino support in recent months, and observers say his reaction to the halftime show won't do anything to help his Republican Party staunch the bleeding ahead of crucial midterms. Clarissa Martinez, a vice president of UnidosUS, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the country, questions Trump's decision to trash Bad Bunny's performance, which was viewed by an audience nearly as large as the number of Americans who voted in the last presidential election. "It's really not a good political move," Martinez told CBC News in an interview. WATCH | How Trump's reaction to Bad Bunny's halftime show fits into a pattern:Andrew Chang explains why U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Bad Bunny’s half-time performance at the Super Bowl and how it fits into a larger pattern.
Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images"Not only was [the halftime show] a missed opportunity for the president, he made it worse for himself with his response to it," said Martinez. Martinez says Trump's disparagement of Bad Bunny rejected the fact that the performer is American and reaffirmed the current concern among many U.S. Hispanics that their citizenship is being questioned amid the months-long Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps across the country. 'Tonight shows they're toast'Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who co-founded an anti-Trump political action committee called the Lincoln Project, pointed to Trump's post and similar reactions from others in his MAGA movement on Sunday as evidence that the Republican Party will "lose so big" in the midterms. "Republicans still don’t realize their only slight chance of possibly holding onto Congress in November is by stemming the collapse of Latino men under thirty. Tonight shows they’re toast," Madrid wrote on X. Prominent MAGA faithful who joined the social media chorus of disapproval included: Megyn Kelly: "I like my half time shows in English from [people] who love America."Laura Loomer: "Totally disgraceful. There's nothing American about any of this." Nick Adams: "Someone needs to tell Bad Bunny he's in America. This is an abomination."Trump's gains in Latino communities was one of the surprises of the 2024 election. The Republican candidate was the choice of 48 per cent of Hispanic voters, just three percentage points behind his Democrat rival Kamala Harris and a jump of 12 percentage points from his 2020 total, according to data compiled by Pew Research Center. Trump participates in a roundtable with Latino leaders in Doral, Fla. on Oct. 22, 2024, during the presidential election campaign. (Lynne Sladky/The Associated Press)That support came not just in spite of Trump's promise to get tough on illegal immigration, but in part because of it, according to Martinez. "Hispanic voters want to see a functioning immigration system, and there was a lot of concern about the chaos that many folks were seeing at the border under the previous [Biden] administration, whether or not the administration was solely responsible," she said. Many Latinos supported Trump on immigration"The Republicans and President Trump orchestrated a very intense campaign on that issue, and that was one of the issues where they actually bested Democrats among Hispanic voters," said Martinez.That policy helped Trump carry border districts with large Hispanic populations that had long leaned Democrat, just as his campaign focus on combatting the rising cost of living helped boost his appeal to working class Latino voters around the country. Political observers in the U.S. also point out that Latino voters are in no way a monolith, with strong and long-standing support for the Republican Party among, for instance, Hispanic social conservatives and anti-Castro Cuban exiles. But now there's evidence that the Trump administration's heavy-handed immigration crackdowns away from the border, as well as its failure to rein in prices, are hurting the Republicans among Hispanic voters. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, fans gathered to watch Bad Bunny's performance. (Alejandro Granadillo/The Associated Press)A poll conducted by the Economist/YouGov in January just after the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis found just 28 per cent of Hispanic respondents approved of the way Trump is handling his job as president, down from 41 per cent in February of last year. The survey, conducted by web-based interviews, included 231 Hispanic citizens as part of a larger poll of 1,602 American adults. Another larger poll of 3,000 Latino registered voters nationwide found 64 per cent of respondents strongly or somewhat disapprove of Trump's performance as president, versus 31 per cent saying they strongly or somewhat approve. That poll was conducted in October 2025, which leaves open the potential that views have since changed, given the huge attention to the administration's Operation Metro Surge immigration crackdown in Minnesota and the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. Among those who told the pollsters they voted for Trump in 2024 election, 13 per cent said they would not do so if they had the chance to vote over again. WATCH | 'ICE out,' Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny declares at Grammy Awards:Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny was a big winner at this year’s Grammy Awards and used the opportunity to speak out against U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The poll also found that 52 per cent of respondents intend to vote for Democrats in the 2026 Congressional midterms, while 28 per cent said they plan to vote for Republicans. While the poll suggests economic issues such as inflation and jobs are top concerns for Latino voters, immigration policy and presidential overreach also registered as important. The October poll, conducted by BSP Research and Shaw & Co. Research polling firms for UnidosUS, used a hybrid methodology where respondents were reached via a mix of live telephone interviews, text-message invitations and online panels, with interviews conducted in both English and Spanish. Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says she believes the Trump administration's performance over the past year will result in a big shift in how the community votes. The chamber's members "feel a sense of betrayal by this administration, given its excessive overreach," Villalobos told Politico last month.
