Sabrina Carpenter against Trump for using her music to whitewash his “inhumane agenda” of deportations

The singer Sabrina Carpenter attacked this Tuesday against the White House for using one of his songs, Junoin a video that shows several of the immigration raids carried out by the Trump Administration.

The song used, Juno, one of the two-time Grammy Award-winning artist’s most popular songs, expresses a very intense romantic and sexual desire towards another person.

This is not the first time that the Trump Administration has resorted to viral songs to promote their policies, nor is it the first time that an artist publicly disassociates himself from the message.

Clash with Taylor Swift

The most recent case has involved Taylor Swift, one of the most visible anti-Trump artists. Last November, the Trump White House used the song The Fate of Ophelia, from his album The Life of a Showgirlin an official TikTok video with patriotic messages and scenes of Trump and his team.

The video closed with a change from the original: on the screen, where fans expect to see “The Fate of Ophelia”, the phrase appeared The Fate of America.

Swift has responded directly to Trump when the Republican has made comments about racial protests or the mail system, saying that his presidency promoted white supremacy and that he had to be “voted out.” He has also encouraged his followers to inform themselves and participate in the elections, reinforcing his role as a liberal political voice against Trump.

In 2024 Trump used Celine Dion’s theme My Heart Will Go On at a rally in Montana. The Canadian’s team issued a statement of “unauthorized use” and made it clear that it did not approve or support the Trump campaign.​

At another rally, in South Dakota, where Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want of The Smiths, the band’s guitarist Johnny Marr publicly asked them to stop using it and stated that he did not want any association with the politician.

Other conflicts with artists

One of the first crashes sounded like classic rock. Rockin’ in the Free World of Neil Young burst into Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies as a perfect anthem to talk about freedom and national greatness, until the Canadian publicly recalled that he was a supporter of Bernie Sanders and not the Republican. Young made it known that he did not authorize the use of his song and turned what Trump wanted to use as a patriotic soundtrack into a direct reproach to his policies, evidencing the distance between the lyrics of the song and the magnate’s project.

At a 2018 rally, the contagious joy of Happy blared just hours after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, a contrast that outraged Pharrell Williams. SHis legal team responded with a harsh cease and desist letter, accusing the then-president of appropriating the song without permission and emptying it of meaning by placing it over a tragedy that, in the artist’s eyes, demanded mourning and political responsibility, not celebration.

The list of protests grew longer with heavyweight names. When You Can’t Always Get What You Want of The Rolling Stones became a regular closing theme at rallies, the band responded with formal notices and the explicit threat of going to court if Trump insisted.

R.E.M., For his part, he exploded when he heard It’s the End of the World as We Know It at an event: Michael Stipe and his companions denounced the use of a critical and apocalyptic song as mere campaign scenery, and stressed that they did not give any type of support to the candidate.​

In recent years, the conflict has also reached the legal field with sentences against the president.

The musician Eddy Grant sued the campaign for using Electric Avenue in a political video and, after a long struggle, a court ruled in favor of the artist, ordering compensation and reinforcing the idea that copyright also applies in the electoral arena.

More recently, Isaac Hayes’ heirs got a judge to ban Trump’s team from continuing to employ Hold On, I’m Comin’ at their rallies, a ruling that many musicians read as a warning that it is no longer enough to complain on social networks: justice is beginning to place clear limits on the propaganda use of their songs without consent.

On the other hand, the Canadian children’s book publisher Kids Can Press published a message along these lines after the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, shared a modified cover of Franklin the Turtle in which The character appears pointing a bazooka at some ships.