Ariana Grande slammed President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday after the White House used her 2024 song “Bye” in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement TikTok video depicting federal agents arresting and handcuffing people.
In the comment section of the clip, the Grammy winner demanded that the administration stop using her music, according to Reuters. Per the outlet, she wrote, “Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”
The music appears to have been taken down at the time of publication and Grande’s remark does not appear in the comment section.
A spokesperson for Grande confirmed to Variety that the singer wrote the comment, but “for some reason it’s not publicly visible” on the post. A source told both Reuters and Variety that Grande’s team was looking into how to remove her music from the video.
In a statement to Reuters responding to Grande, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens.”
This is not the first time Grande has elicited a response from the White House. In September 2025, she re-shared a post to her Instagram that denounced the Trump administration for its ICE raids and transphobic rhetoric. Per Variety, the post was written by activist Matt Bernstein as a “check-in” for Trump supporters and posed the question: “It’s been 250 days. Now that immigrants have been violently torn from their families and communities have been destroyed, now that trans people have been blamed for virtually everything and live in fear, now that free speech is on the brink of collapse for us all — has your life gotten better?”
In response, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly at the time, “Save your tears, Ariana. Because President Trump’s actions ended Joe Biden’s inflation crisis and are bringing in trillions in new investment.”
Trump has drawn the ire of several musicians for using their music, often without authorization. This was especially true during his 2024 campaign. From Canadian singer Céline Dion to the family of soul icon Isaac Hayes, they’ve done everything from issuing public statements to sending cease-and-desist letters to Trump through lawyers.
