In her few short years in the spotlight, it’s safe to say that Sabrina Carpenter has already compiled just about every accolade or “you’ve made it to the top of the mountain” signifier there is, including a pair of Grammy Awards. Today, she adds another prestigious rite of passage for an A-list musical artist: Telling off the Donald Trump administration for unauthorized use (what some might call “theft”) of her music.
Nor did the pop princess mince words: After the official White House account published a new Tuesday video in their ongoing series of heavily fetishized United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) depictions, which was set to snippets of Carpenter’s “Juno,” the artist quickly responded by calling the video “evil and disgusting.” She immediately went on to demand, “Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”
this video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.
— Sabrina Carpenter (@SabrinaAnnLynn) December 2, 2025
It’s certainly nice to see Carpenter take such a direct and principled stand against wanting any association with a Trump administration that is currently in the process of attempting to scapegoat illegal immigrants in the U.S. for … well, just about any social ill. And there’s little denying that it makes perfect sense for the likes of Carpenter to stand up against unauthorized use of her music, especially given that the Trump administration is proudly deporting the likes of 19-year-old Honduran college students who make up a notable component of her own consumer demographic. But Sabrina absolutely gets bonus points for cutting right to the chase and not dancing around the point: When you see evil, call it evil! It’s not complicated.
Carpenter’s tiff with the White House is just the latest of a seemingly endless flow of these same types of stories. In just the last few months, DHS managed to piss off Nintendo by using the Pokemon TV theme in a video (September), the band MGMT by using “Little Dark Age” in a video (October) and Olivia Rodrigo’s “all-american bitch” in another video in November, prompting her to put out a similar statement: “don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.” Even residents of the so-called manosphere of male podcasters have not been immune, as DHS managed to unnerve Theo Von by using some of his clips in a social media video, prompting Von to write on X, “Yooo DHS i didnt approve to be used in this.” Perhaps unsurprisingly as a quasi-Trump ally, Von’s request to have the video in question removed was one of the few that was actually honored.
The illustrious history of the Trump campaign in particular using artists’ music without permission has included a veritable who’s-who of hall of fame performers, including at various points Beyoncé, Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Foo Fighters, Neil Young, ABBA, Ozzy Osbourne, R.E.M., Rihanna, The Rolling Stones, The White Stripes, Elton John and even the estate of George Harrison. Carpenter can no doubt consider herself in good company alongside so many musical greats, all united through the affirmation, spoken or unspoken, of Donald Trump as just a huge piece of shit.
