Guess she didn’t like that one.
A Kacey Musgraves song that was used by the White House on a video highlighting ICE deportation efforts has been muted, days after the Trump administration appeared to troll the country singer following her recent comments.
Though she’s from Texas, the “Dry Spell” singer has never been shy about voicing her left-leaning political opinions. The state is currently in the middle of a heated Senate election between current Republican attorney general Ken Paxton and Democrat member of the state’s House of Representatives James Talarico, and over the weekend Musgraves invited Talarico to her concert in Dallas while expressing her support for his campaign.
And when former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem took a shot at Musgraves for having Talarico at the her show, and said she preferred Ella Langley instead, Musgraves quickly fired back:
(Her tweet was obviously a reference to the story Noem told in her book about shooting her “untrainable” 14-month-old family dog Cricket two decades ago, a story that made headlines while Noem was serving as governor of South Dakota and caused outrage among…well, pretty much everybody).
Most recently, comments that Musgraves made on her concert Sunday about Christopher Columbus have been making their rounds, after the singer called the Italian explorer a “loser” and “the lamest person” to ever exist:
“Tomorrow’s Monday? That sucks. Boo. Oh yeah, it’s a holiday, right? Ew, that’s right, wait, it’s Columbus Day?
Yeah, obviously f–k Columbus. Literally the lamest person to probably ever exist. Like, for real. What a loser. You’re a loser Christopher Columbus. We hate you.”
@jacs_lens F Columbus 😂 #kaceymusgraves #indigenous #columbusday #middleofnowheretour @kaceymusgraves
Well anyway, the White House has apparently taken notice of Musgraves’ recent political comments, and decided to troll her by using her song “Mexico Honey” in their latest video highlighting the work of ICE in deporting illegal immigrants.
The caption “Going back smooth” also makes a play on the song’s lyrics:
“You’re going down smooth like Mexico, honey
Take my heart, take all my money
I want you so bad, it ain’t even funny”
Well it’s no surprise that Kacey probably wasn’t happy about the use of her song by the White House, and just a couple days after it was posted, the sound on the TikTok has been muted.
@whitehouse Going back smooth 👋
There hasn’t been any comment from Kacey on the video, so we don’t have any indication as to whether it was her label, TikTok, or the singer herself that requested it be removed. But it’s obviously not the first time the White House has used songs from anti-Trump artists to highlight their deportation efforts. Artists like Bad Bunny, Zara Larsson, Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande have all spoken out after the official government social media account used their song on videos supporting ICE, and earlier this year the audio was removed from videos featuring Taylor Swift’s songs, though the “Blank Space” singer didn’t publicly comment on the use of her songs.
In fact, the White House has admitted in the past to using songs from anti-Trump artists to “ragebait” and bring attention to the videos, telling Variety in response to a question about their use of Swift’s music:
“We made this video because we knew fake news media brands like Variety would breathlessly amplify them. Congrats, you got played.”
Seems like their strategy is working…even if the artists don’t like it.
