Right-wing influencer Candace Owens broke from MAGA’s outrage over Bad Bunny’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, calling out their apparent delusion over a show she called “objectively successful.”
“Conservatives are now fully deluding themselves and paying influencers to invert reality. To what end? It’s like watching a bad rerun [of] Hillary Clinton’s “too big to fail” 2016 campaign,” Owens wrote on X.
“Reality: you lost the Super Bowl narrative. Bad Bunny had an objectively successful performance, whether you like it or not,” she continued. “More reality: the majority doesn’t agree with ICE shooting people in the face in Minnesota.“
Right-wing officials and influencers were up in arms in the aftermath of Bad Bunny’s historic performance Sunday, where he sang entirely in Spanish and displayed the message: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
In reaction to the performance, many suggested Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock was more successful.
Although Nielsen ratings for Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance have not been released, the video amassed 55 million views on YouTube. TPUSA’s alternative performance, according to The New York Times, had 6.1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube Sunday and had about 22 million views as of published time.
Owens, however, disputed on her show Monday that the 6 million concurrent viewers number was “made up” and “impossible.”
“So Bad Bunny, objectively, whether you like him or not, he had a successful Super Bowl halftime performance in terms of the metrics,” Owens said. “This means that the — I would say unnecessary — Super Bowl political lines that were drawn by Turning Point USA was not successful in terms of drawing people away from the NFL’s viewership.”
She told viewers she is not, nor has she “ever been a conservative stereotype when it comes to the Super Bowl halftime performance,” and condemned the outrage.
“I feel like it’s a bit of a fad now, on the right for you to watch the Super Bowl for the sole purpose of complaining about the halftime performance and why it didn’t live up to what you think that it should be,” Owens said.
In contrast to the MAGA hate on the halftime show, Owens praised its set design and dance, but was critical about it being in Spanish, claiming the audience could not “emotionally connect to that performance.”
Despite the Bad Bunny’s songs being in a different language, the performance was well received by non-Spanish speakers.