The Trump administration continued its policy of trolling pop stars over the weekend when it posted yet another video promoting its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration agenda, just days after quietly deleting a previous clip in which it used Sabrina Carpenter‘s music without the singer’s permission.
Despite the Grammy-winning star lashing the hijacking of her song “Juno” in the earlier propaganda visual featuring a compilation of ICE agents chasing, tackling and handcuffing people set to a snippet of the song — with Carpenter calling the video “evil and disgusting” — the White House doubled-down on Friday (Dec. 5) with another provocative clip.
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This time, the White House’s official account borrowed a snippet from Carpenter’s promo commercial for her Oct. 18 hosting/performing gig on Saturday Night Live, defiantly brushing off the pop singer’s anger about having her music used to promote Trump’s deportation agenda by altering the audio and having Carpenter appear to support the nationwide ICE raids.
“I think I might need to arrest someone for being too illegal,” Carpenter appears to say in the clumsily edited clip, in which she clearly does not say the “illegal” part; in the original, Carpenter threatened to arrest breakout SNL star Marcello Hernández for being “too hot.” The on-screen captions hew to the original bit, in which Carpenter threatened to “arrest” Hernández in a spin on a routine she performed on her Short N’ Sweet tour in which she “arrested” stars and fans in the crowd for being too hot.
“Oh, well, I turn myself in,” Hernández says in response, holding out his hands to be cuffed (in the original, Carpenter did a bait-and-switch by “arresting” a cameraman instead of Hernández). “You’re under arrest,” Carpenter appears to say as the White House video cuts to footage of ICE officers chasing and arresting people set to Gucci Mane’s 2017 song “I Get the Bag.” The video’s caption reads: “PSA: If you’re a criminal illegal, you WILL be arrested & deported.”
Miami-bred American citizen Hernández — who is of Cuban-Dominican descent — did not appear to comment on the ICE video as of Monday morning (Dec. 8) and spokespeople for SNL and Carpenter had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.
After the initial ICE, Carpenter tweeted, “Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.” That response elicited a snarky retort from Trump spokesperson Abigail Jackson, who told Newsweek, “Here’s a Short n’ Sweet message for Sabrina Carpenter: We won’t apologize for deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country. Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?”
The White House has not yet commented on why the first Carpenter video was deleted. The “Juno” bit was just the latest example of the Trump administration pairing pop and rock hits with its political agenda in a manner that has irked a number of the artists.
Carpenter was a vocal supporter of Trump’s 2024 election rival Vice President Kamala Harris and is the latest in an increasingly long line of musicians who’ve criticized the meme-loving White House for using their music in political videos without their permission. Earlier this year, Kenny Loggins bashed Trump for using his Top Gun song “Danger Zone” under an AI-generated video in which the president appeared to spray a river of fecal matter on American citizens participating in the anti-Trump “No Kings” protests.
In addition, Swifties were furious at the White House last month over a TikTok video set to Swift’s Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping single “The Fate of Ophelia” — renamed “The Fate of America” — featuring Trump’s mug shot from when he was charged with trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and images of POTUS kissing an American flag.
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