The Podcast Bros Tried & Failed To Get Their Young Male Audience To Turn Off Bad Bunny
“Turn off this halftime,” wrote Jake Paul in an X post shared hours before Bad Bunny stepped onto the field at Levi’s Stadium for his Super Bowl halftime show. “A fake American citizen performing who publicly hates America. I cannot support that.”
“Bunny is fake bc of his values and criticism of our great country,” he added in a follow-up tweet, an apparent reference to Bad Bunny’s criticism of Trump’s immigration policies and ICE’s violent actions against both immigrants and US citizens.
Paul, who lives in Bad Bunny’s native Puerto Rico, a country whose citizens have had US citizenship since 1971, appeared to be parroting the perspective other conservative voices have been amplifying since the rapper was announced as the halftime show performer. This includes the fratty men on the Full Send podcast, a group that shares Paul’s audience of primarily young men aged 18 to 24.
“I get what they’re trying to do, get a whole new audience and get the Latinos in there, but it’s pretty stupid,” host Aaron “Steiny” Steinberg said of Bad Bunny being picked as the halftime performer in a clip from a September episode of their podcast that was recirculated on social media before the show.
“In America, NFL is about gambling, beer, football,” he continued, adding, “He doesn’t fit that narrative at all.”
Paul and the hosts of the Full Send podcast endorsed President Trump in the 2024 election. Those endorsements and others from conservative male podcasters are largely credited with winning the “Bro Vote,” a demographic that played a major role in securing Trump’s second term. However, their attempts to dissuade their audience from tuning in to Bad Bunny’s performance don’t appear to have been as successful as their sway in the election.
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In just 13 minutes, Bad Bunny upended these criticisms with a performance filled with Boricua pride and resistance politics, which attracted more than 135 million viewers. Per CBS News, early figures show that it was the most-watched halftime performance of all time. A poll from Change Research conducted before the performance showed a strong interest in Bad Bunny’s set among young men. The Puerto Rican megastar didn’t seem to suffer even in the face of backlash that included a barely-watched rival halftime show hosted by Turning Point USA, the conservative organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
The success of Bad Bunny’s show was enough to even make Paul backtrack on his statements, tweeting on February 9, “Guys i love bad bunny idk what happened on my twitter last night ?? wtf.”
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