Fact Check: Did Trump say Bad Bunny is from the 'Mexican city of Puerto Rico'?

WASHINGTON, DC: A rumor has been bouncing around social media that President Donald Trump called rapper Bad Bunny from “the Mexican city of Puerto Rico.”

It all started shortly after the NFL, Apple Music, and Roc Nation announced that Bad Bunny would headline the Super Bowl halftime show in February 2026. The sensation was born and raised in Puerto Rico.

Context of the claim

That’s when the rumor mill started turning. Suddenly, snippets of supposed “Trump audio” began making the rounds on TikTok, Instagram, X, and even Bluesky. 

Trump said in the alleged clip, “The halftime show of our next Super Bowl will be done by Bad, can’t believe I’m saying this, Bad Bunny, OK? Now, what I’ve been told, we have intel briefings, this is a person from the Mexican city of Puerto Rico, OK? And, already I have a problem with that.”

Videos showing users reacting to this supposed “Trump quote” racked up millions of views.

One TikTok alone pulled in over 3 million views with the caption, “Apparently, Bad Bunny hails from the ‘Mexican province of Puerto Rico,’ at least according to Donald Trump.”

Some people were in on the joke, but others weren't. Comments poured in from critics convinced that Trump had genuinely flubbed geography.

Fact Check: False

The team at Snopes got flooded with emails asking, “Did President Trump call Puerto Rico a city in Mexico?”

To find out, the fact-checker searched across Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo, looking for any credible reports of Trump uttering the phrase. However, their searches turned up nothing. No legitimate outlet ever reported Trump saying Puerto Rico was part of Mexico.

Instead, those searches turned up a Lead Stories fact-check, which had already debunked the claim. Turns out, the now-infamous audio didn’t come from the 47th president but from a comedian.

The so-called “Trump audio” actually came from J-L Cauvin, a stand-up comedian and Trump impersonator whose uncanny voice work has fooled millions before. On September 29, Cauvin posted his original video featuring himself on camera doing the impression across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X.

Each upload went viral, collecting millions of views. Unfortunately, some viewers ripped the audio, stripped out the video, and shared it as if it were real.

Snopes reached out, and Cauvin responded via Messenger. “On one hand, it’s gratifying to know that something I’ve worked on for many years is good enough to entertain and even fool people, but on the other hand, it’s embarrassing as an American that so many people consider this not just plausible as something Trump would say, but highly likely," he said.

"As a comedian, I just wish my video/work were getting more views than some of the reactions and lip syncs of it!” Cauvin added.

Similar Trump gaffe

If this feels familiar, that’s because it echoes another viral Trump rumor from earlier this month, when social media users claimed the President referred to the leaders of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as presidents.

For the record, both are US territories led by governors with the sitting US president overseeing them all.

That rumor likely recycled Trump’s real-life slip-up from back in 2017, when he said, “I met with the president of the Virgin Islands” during his first term.

The quote was genuine, but he didn’t repeat the gaffe recently, and there’s zero evidence of him calling Puerto Rico’s governor a “president.”