Bobby Pulido’s old defense of a brutal music video has come back into the spotlight just as his congressional campaign in Texas heats up. The resurfaced remarks are stirring fresh attention because they sit alongside a string of other controversies that opponents are eager to drag back into the conversation.
Back in a 2016 interview, the Latin Grammy winner defended Gerardo Ortiz after backlash over the video for “Fuiste Mía,” a production packed with kidnapping, sexual violence, and murder. In the clip, a man catches his girlfriend cheating, kills her lover, then handcuffs, blindfolds, assaults, and burns her alive in the trunk of a car.
Pulido brushed off the outrage and framed the whole thing as a creative call made by the artist and his team. “I’ve made videos with suggestive images; some have stayed, others have been edited, and still others were never used. That’s the decision of the artist and their team,” Pulido said in response to public backlash against the production.
That defense has taken on new weight because Pulido is now running for Congress in Texas’ 15th District, one of the most closely watched races in the state. The former Tejano star is trying to unseat Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican who won her last race with a comfortable margin in 2024.
Pulido is no stranger to controversy, and that is exactly why the old interview is making the rounds again. He has also faced scrutiny over a resurfaced social media history that included links to explicit websites, plus a post that appeared to show him urinating on President Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
He has tried to laugh off those moments, saying in 2024 that it’s “it’s impossible to have Twitter and not watch porn,” and that the Trump-star episode was just a joke involving water. Those explanations have not exactly settled the criticism, especially with voters already paying close attention to every move in a district that can swing hard in either direction.
Another issue hanging over Pulido is the criticism tied to a 2018 benefit concert at a Texas middle school, where he brought along a registered sex offender. Pulido said he did not know about the person’s status at the time, and he later dismissed the episode as a “nothing story,” but the story has kept resurfacing anyway.
The campaign says opponents are trying to use old material to distract from bigger problems on the other side of the aisle. Pulido’s team argues that Republicans are focused on a decade-old interview instead of allegations involving De La Cruz and her former husband’s claims from 2021 divorce proceedings.
That pushback has kept the race messy and personal, with both sides aiming straight at character, judgment, and trust. Pulido’s campaign said, “This is emblematic of national Republicans doing anything and everything to distract voters from what are very real — not based on a fictional video — child abuse accusations against Monica De La Cruz and her refusal to release the Epstein files after thousands of girls were trafficked and abused,” a Pulido campaign spokesperson said.
De La Cruz’s side has also been hit with its own wave of accusations and counter-accusations, which has only made the district even more combative. Pulido’s camp insists Republicans are deliberately twisting his past comments, including his remarks about artistic freedom and violent imagery in regional Mexican music.
In that old interview, Pulido also compared the reaction to the video with how people slow down to stare at a car crash. “What happens when there’s a [car] accident?” Pulido asked, comparing the music video to real-life instances of tragedy. “Traffic doesn’t flow because people slow down or even stop to see what happened; something similar happens with the regional Mexican genre when these kinds of incidents occur.
He also said he didn’t always agree with how women were portrayed by fellow artists, but argued that everyone deserves an opinion. That kind of answer may have sounded harmless in the moment, but in a heated House race it now reads like another quote waiting to be weaponized.
Republicans clearly see it that way, too. “Bobby Pulido has spent his entire adult life defending perverts and predators while lashing out at members of law enforcement who keep Texans safe. He is a truly sick individual who is morally rotten,” Zach Kraft, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee (RNC), said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
As the general election approaches on Nov. 3, both candidates are under pressure to hold their ground and keep the race from turning into a full-blown scandal marathon. Pulido’s supporters are betting his celebrity, bilingual appeal, and cultural reach can carry him through, while critics are leaning hard on the record that keeps resurfacing right when he least wants it to.
