Donald Trump’s success in attracting a broad vary of Individuals to vote Republican, together with among the many Latino neighborhood, was key to his presidential election victory in 2024.
Now in 2026, Trump’s distaste for the all-Spanish-language Tremendous Bowl halftime efficiency by Bad Bunny — an American citizen from Puerto Rico — suggests scoring factors with Latino voters is not a excessive precedence for the president.
“No person understands a phrase this man is saying, and the dancing is disgusting,” Trump mentioned in a social media submit on Sunday. He referred to as the halftime present “an affront to the Greatness of America.”
Polls recommend Trump has been losing Latino help in current months, and observers say his response to the halftime present will not do something to assist his Republican Party staunch the bleeding forward of essential midterms.
Clarissa Martinez, a vp of UnidosUS, the biggest Latino civil rights and advocacy group within the nation, questions Trump’s determination to trash Bad Bunny’s efficiency, which was considered by an viewers almost as giant because the variety of Individuals who voted within the final presidential election.
“It is actually not a very good political transfer,” Martinez advised CBC News in an interview.
Andrew Chang explains why U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Bad Bunny’s half-time efficiency on the Tremendous Bowl and the way it matches into a bigger sample.
Photographs offered by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Photographs
“Not solely was [the halftime show] a missed alternative for the president, he made it worse for himself along with his response to it,” mentioned Martinez.
Martinez says Trump’s disparagement of Bad Bunny rejected the truth that the performer is American and reaffirmed the present concern amongst many U.S. Hispanics that their citizenship is being questioned amid the months-long Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps throughout the nation.
‘Tonight reveals they’re toast’
Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who co-founded an anti-Trump political motion committee referred to as the Lincoln Mission, pointed to Trump’s submit and related reactions from others in his MAGA motion on Sunday as proof that the Republican Party will “lose so massive” within the midterms.
“Republicans nonetheless don’t understand their solely slight likelihood of presumably holding onto Congress in November is by stemming the collapse of Latino males below thirty. Tonight reveals they’re toast,” Madrid wrote on X.
Distinguished MAGA devoted who joined the social media refrain of disapproval included:
- Megyn Kelly: “I like my half time reveals in English from [people] who love America.”
- Laura Loomer: “Completely disgraceful. There’s nothing American about any of this.”
- Nick Adams: “Somebody wants to inform Bad Bunny he is in America. That is an abomination.”
Trump’s positive factors in Latino communities was one of many surprises of the 2024 election. The Republican candidate was the selection of 48 per cent of Hispanic voters, simply three proportion factors behind his Democrat rival Kamala Harris and a leap of 12 proportion factors from his 2020 whole, in response to knowledge compiled by Pew Analysis Heart.
That help got here not simply regardless of Trump’s promise to get robust on unlawful immigration, however partly due to it, in response to Martinez.
“Hispanic voters need to see a functioning immigration system, and there was loads of concern in regards to the chaos that many people had been seeing on the border below the earlier [Biden] administration, whether or not or not the administration was solely accountable,” she mentioned.
Many Latinos supported Trump on immigration
“The Republicans and President Trump orchestrated a really intense marketing campaign on that subject, and that was one of many points the place they really bested Democrats amongst Hispanic voters,” mentioned Martinez.
That coverage helped Trump carry border districts with giant Hispanic populations that had lengthy leaned Democrat, simply as his marketing campaign give attention to combatting the rising price of residing helped enhance his enchantment to working class Latino voters across the nation.
Political observers within the U.S. additionally level out that Latino voters are under no circumstances a monolith, with robust and long-standing help for the Republican Party amongst, for example, Hispanic social conservatives and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
However now there’s proof that the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration crackdowns away from the border, in addition to its failure to rein in costs, are hurting the Republicans amongst Hispanic voters.
A ballot performed by the Economist/YouGov in January simply after the Renee Good capturing in Minneapolis discovered simply 28 per cent of Hispanic respondents accredited of the best way Trump is dealing with his job as president, down from 41 per cent in February of final yr.
The survey, performed by web-based interviews, included 231 Hispanic residents as half of a bigger ballot of 1,602 American adults.
One other bigger ballot of three,000 Latino registered voters nationwide discovered 64 per cent of respondents strongly or considerably disapprove of Trump’s efficiency as president, versus 31 per cent saying they strongly or considerably approve.
That ballot was performed in October 2025, which leaves open the potential that views have since modified, given the massive consideration to the administration’s Operation Metro Surge immigration crackdown in Minnesota and the capturing deaths of two U.S. residents by federal brokers.
Amongst those that advised the pollsters they voted for Trump in 2024 election, 13 per cent mentioned they’d not achieve this if that they had the prospect to vote over once more.
Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny was a giant winner at this yr’s Grammy Awards and used the chance to talk out in opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration insurance policies.
The ballot additionally discovered that 52 per cent of respondents intend to vote for Democrats within the 2026 Congressional midterms, whereas 28 per cent mentioned they plan to vote for Republicans.
Whereas the ballot suggests financial points similar to inflation and jobs are prime considerations for Latino voters, immigration coverage and presidential overreach additionally registered as necessary.
The October ballot, performed by BSP Analysis and Shaw & Co. Analysis polling companies for UnidosUS, used a hybrid methodology the place respondents had been reached through a mixture of reside phone interviews, text-message invites and on-line panels, with interviews performed in each English and Spanish.
Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says she believes the Trump administration’s efficiency over the previous yr will end in a giant shift in how the neighborhood votes.
The chamber’s members “really feel a way of betrayal by this administration, given its extreme overreach,” Villalobos advised Politico final month.
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