Sabrina Carpenter is used to seeing her songs all over social media, but she drew a hard line when the White House dropped one of her tracks into a video defending President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The pop star blasted the clip as “evil” and “disgusting,” accusing the administration of twisting her work to sell a political agenda she wants no part of. Her pushback turned a routine piece of government messaging into a full-on culture clash over who controls the soundtrack to American politics.
What started as a single reply video from the Trump White House quickly snowballed into a broader fight about consent, image, and the way this administration leans on pop culture to sharpen its message. Carpenter’s outrage, and the way officials chose to answer it, shows how even a three-minute song can become a battlefield when it is dropped into the middle of a national argument over immigration and basic humanity.
The ICE video that crossed Sabrina Carpenter’s line
The spark was a White House social media video promoting President Donald Trump’s hard line on illegal immigration, built around footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and set to a Sabrina Carpenter song. The clip was posted as a reply from an official account, then quietly deleted after backlash, but not before fans flagged that the track had been dropped in without the artist’s blessing to help sell Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. According to reporting on the Trump White House video, the song was used to underscore a message that framed aggressive enforcement as a necessary show of strength at the border.
Carpenter did not treat it as a flattering sync placement. She responded on social media with a blistering statement, calling the video “evil and disgusting” and telling the administration, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, inhumane agenda.” In her post, she made it clear that the issue was not just about licensing or money, but about being unwilling to have her work repackaged as a soundtrack for policies she sees as cruel. Coverage of her reaction notes that the singer-songwriter slammed the since-removed reply and directly addressed the White House, making her refusal to be associated with that message unmistakable in the process, as detailed in reports on the “evil and disgusting” clip.
“Evil,” “disgusting,” and “inhumane”: Carpenter’s language hits hard
Plenty of artists have objected when politicians use their music, but Sabrina Carpenter’s language landed with unusual force. She did not hide behind a carefully lawyered statement, instead calling the White House video “evil” and “disgusting” and accusing the administration of trying to “benefit your inhumane agenda” by wrapping its immigration message in her sound. That choice of words put morality, not just politics, at the center of her complaint, and it framed the Trump White House’s use of her song as a deliberate attempt to launder something ugly through a glossy pop hook. Reporting on her response notes that she directly condemned the Trump White House for using her work to sell Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
She also leaned into the kind of direct, conversational tone that has helped her build a fiercely online fan base, turning that same voice on the most powerful office in the country. In one pointed line, she asked whether the people behind the video had “ever tried this thing called empathy,” a jab that treated the administration less like a distant institution and more like a group of “sick monsters” who had chosen cruelty over basic decency. Coverage of her comments highlights that she was described as the latest pop singer to call out the administration and that the broader conversation around the video included the line, “Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?”, a sentiment that captured just how harshly critics viewed the White House’s approach to immigration and its decision to wrap that approach in a Carpenter song, as reflected in reporting on how Carpenter slams the White House.
The White House trolls back with her own lyrics
If the Trump administration had quietly apologized or simply moved on, the story might have ended with Carpenter’s post. Instead, the White House decided to clap back, leaning into the fight by trolling her with her own lyrics. After she condemned the use of her song, an official account responded by quoting a line from one of her tracks, effectively turning her own words into a taunt and signaling that the administration was not interested in backing down. Reporting on the exchange notes that the White House trolls Sabrina Carpenter with her own lyrics after she slammed the Trump administration for using her music in the ICE video.
That move fit a familiar pattern for President Donald Trump’s team, which has often treated pop culture dust-ups as chances to rally supporters rather than moments to de-escalate. By quoting Carpenter back at herself, the White House tried to flip the script, casting her outrage as overblown and framing the whole thing as just another skirmish in a never-ending culture war. The trolling response also underscored how comfortable the administration is with using social media theatrics to keep critics on the defensive, even when the critic is a chart-topping artist whose fan base skews young, vocal, and deeply online.
Franklin the Turtle, Dec backlash, and a wider creative revolt
Sabrina Carpenter is not the only one who saw the ICE video as a line-crossing moment. The publisher behind Franklin the Turtle also spoke out after discovering that the Trump administration had used the beloved children’s character in its social media messaging, objecting to the way a gentle literary figure had been pulled into a harsh political fight. Coverage of the reaction notes that Sabrina Carpenter, Franklin the Turtle publisher condemn the Trump administration’s use of their work on social media, making clear that the frustration stretched beyond one pop star.
That shared backlash hints at a broader shift in how artists and rights holders are approaching politics in the Trump era. Instead of quietly sending legal letters or shrugging off unauthorized uses as the cost of doing business, they are calling out the president by name and framing the dispute as a moral stand. Reporting on the controversy notes that the publisher is not alone and that Sabrina Carpenter lashed out at the White House on Tuesday for using her song in a video, a reaction that was described alongside a reference to a lyric from her song “Juno,” as detailed in coverage that highlights how the publisher is not alone in objecting to the administration’s tactics.
Why this fight over one song matters
On the surface, the dispute is about a single video and a single song, but the stakes are bigger than one sync. When the Trump White House drops a Sabrina Carpenter track into an ICE highlight reel, it is not just borrowing a catchy hook, it is trying to borrow her credibility and the emotional weight her music carries with fans. Carpenter’s refusal to let that slide, and her decision to call the video “evil” and “disgusting,” is a reminder that artists are increasingly unwilling to let their work be treated as a neutral backdrop for policies they see as racist or inhumane. Her comments, including her direct shot at the White House video, turned what might have been a forgettable piece of political content into a flashpoint about consent and complicity.
The administration’s decision to troll her with her own lyrics only sharpened that divide, signaling that it would rather score points in the culture war than engage with the underlying concern about how it uses creative work. At the same time, the fact that Sabrina Carpenter, Franklin the Turtle’s publisher, and other critics are speaking out in such blunt terms shows how much pressure there is on public figures to draw clear lines in the Trump era. Reporting on the backlash notes that Sabrina Carpenter, Franklin the Turtle publisher condemn the Trump administration’s use of their work on social media, and that chorus of resistance suggests this will not be the last time the White House finds itself in a public fight with the people who create the culture it is so eager to weaponize.
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