The Official Lie: A Harmless Gaffe
They’ll tell you it was an intern. They always do. They’ll say some 20-year-old kid, hyped up on caffeine and patriotism, just grabbed the first trending song they could find on TikTok to make a “relatable” video for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement social media channels. It was a mistake. An oversight. They’ll issue a half-apology about respecting artists’ rights and take the video down, hoping we all forget by the next news cycle. They want you to believe this was a simple, goofy error in judgment, a moment of tone-deafness from an administration that is, they assure you, just trying to do its job.
It’s a lie. It’s a comfortable, easy-to-swallow lie that allows everyone to go back to their lives without confronting the monster at the door.
Just a Song, Right?
The narrative they are pushing, the one that whispers through their official channels and friendly media outlets, is that this is a kerfuffle over music licensing. Sabrina Carpenter is mad her song was used without permission. A classic artist-versus-corporation spat, only this time the corporation is the United States government under Donald Trump. They want to frame her powerful response as a celebrity tantrum. They reduce a moment of profound ethical violation to a bureaucratic slip-up. Why? Because if it’s just about paperwork, then nobody has to talk about the actual content of the video. Nobody has to look at the faces in those ICE raids. Nobody has to hear the sickening, gut-wrenching dissonance of a joyful pop anthem playing over footage of families being ripped apart.
Is that what you believe? Do you really think this was an accident?
The Terrifying Truth: Culture As a Weapon
This was not a mistake. This was a test. A deliberate, calculated, and deeply sinister act of psychological warfare waged on the American people and the world. Using Sabrina Carpenter’s effervescent, Grammy-winning hit “Juno” — a song bursting with life and youthful energy — as the soundtrack for state-sanctioned deportations is a move straight out of a dystopian playbook. It is the normalization of cruelty through the appropriation of joy. It’s a tactic designed to break your brain, to create a cognitive dissonance so profound that you either shut down or, worse, become desensitized. They are laundering brutality through pop culture.
Think about it. The act itself is horrifying. ICE raids are moments of terror, confusion, and heartbreak. Now, imagine that terror set to a top-40 beat. The song’s inclusion isn’t meant to soften the blow. It’s meant to mock. It’s a sneering, cynical wink that says, “Yes, we are doing this, and we’ll use the very culture you love to rub it in your face. Nothing is sacred. Your art is our tool.”
This Isn’t The First Time, But It’s Worse
Donald Trump has a long and storied history of infuriating musicians by using their work without permission at his rallies. From Neil Young to the Rolling Stones to Panic! At The Disco, artists have been screaming for him to stop for years. But this is different. This is a terrifying escalation. A campaign rally is political theater. This… this is the official action of the United States government. It’s not a campaign trying to win votes; it’s a federal agency with guns and badges using a pop song as the score for its enforcement actions. The line has been crossed. The Rubicon is in the rearview mirror.
What does this signal? It signals that the guardrails are gone. It’s a blatant display of power, a message that they can and will co-opt any part of our shared cultural landscape for their own purposes. They are taking something that brings people together — music — and twisting it into a symbol of division and fear. Today it’s Sabrina Carpenter. Who is it tomorrow? Are they going to use a Taylor Swift ballad for a drone strike montage? A Beyoncé anthem for a video promoting mass surveillance? Where does it end? Does it end?
The Chilling Implications
The true goal here is to demoralize and disorient. When the symbols of happiness are stapled to images of state-enforced misery, the world starts to feel insane. It’s a strategy to make you feel powerless, to make you believe that resistance is absurd. If your protest songs can be co-opted, if your love songs can become the soundtrack to raids, then what hope is there? It’s a deeply cynical play, and it’s working. People are arguing about copyright law while the real poison seeps into the foundations of our society. This isn’t a legal issue; it’s a moral one. It’s a spiritual one.
Sabrina Carpenter’s response was sharp and necessary. She slammed them. Good. But can one artist’s tweet stop a freight train? She’s one voice against an entire propaganda machine that is just getting started. They tested the waters with this video. They saw the reaction. And now they’re calibrating for the next time. They are learning. What are we doing? Are we learning, or are we just getting angry on the internet for a day before we move on to the next outrage? Because that’s what they’re counting on. They’re counting on our exhaustion. They are weaponizing our short attention spans against us. This isn’t just about a pop song anymore. It’s about whether we have any culture left that can’t be turned into a tool for the powerful. It’s a battle for our collective soul, and they just fired a major shot using a bubblegum pop hit as the cannonball. Are you listening? Are you truly awake to what is happening right now?
