John Oliver has made it clear where he stands amid controversy over Bad Bunny being tapped for next year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. While running down recent headlines during Sunday night’s episode of “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver quipped: “The NFL ‘controversially’ gave the Super Bowl Halftime Show to one of the hottest, most commercially successful people alive.”
The announcement last week that the Puerto Rican rapper would take the stage on football’s biggest night has caused widespread furor from the right, with President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem warning that ICE will be present at the Super Bowl. In an interview on Benny Johnson’s podcast, Noem said that ICE would be “all over that place” with every intention to “enforce the law.”
Bad Bunny has been outspoken with his thoughts about the Trump administration and its recent ICE raids across the country, confirming that he decided not to add the U.S. to his 2025-26 tour dates due to his concern that ICE “could be outside [my concert].” He also addressed the Super Bowl backlash during his “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig over the weekend, mocking his haters after thanking his true fans in Spanish: “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”
On “Last Week Tonight,” after showing a montage of conservative pundits sounding off on the NFL’s decision to have Bad Bunny perform — with one broadcaster even asserting he is not an American artist despite Puerto Rico being a U.S. territory — Oliver transitioned into a segment on the continued ICE raids in the U.S.
“Yet again this week, we saw nauseating footage of ICE raids around the country with perhaps the worst happening in Chicago, where federal agents handcuffed a city council member, tossed a tear gas canister onto a busy street near a school and raided a whole apartment building, turning apartments upside down,” Oliver said.
“But as grim as all of this has been,” he continued, “the one glimmer of hope has been the strength of the pushback from local communities around the country. There have been widespread protests against ICE — and some of them very funny, from someone dancing in a large frog costume outside an ICE detention center in Portland to a protest outside Chicago holding up this excellent sign which read, ‘I fucked two of you on Grindr… (pretty sure).’”
Oliver concluded that Trump’s government and ICE cannot “cover up the ugliness of what they are doing right now, and it deserves to be pushed back on and exposed at every available opportunity.”
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He added: “Because if we do not do that, then much like two ICE agents somewhere outside Chicago, I’m pretty sure we are fucked.”
From Variety US