Taylor Swift Pulls Her Songs From White House and Trump Campaign TikTok Videos
Taylor Swift has had her music removed from multiple TikTok videos posted by the official White House account and Donald Trump's campaign page, after her songs were used without authorisation.
On 13 August 2026, Rolling Stone reported that the White House TikTok account had posted a video of Trump using Swift's 2021 vault track 'I Bet You Think About Me' — a country duet from her re-recorded album Red (Taylor's Version), whose music video was directed by Blake Lively — as its soundtrack, accompanied by the caption 'We know you think about us.' Within hours, the song was quietly muted and stripped from the video, though it remains available in other clips and as a TikTok sound. Rolling Stone
This is not the first time. On 8 August, Swift removed her song 'August' from a video posted by the Team Trump TikTok account, Trump's official campaign page. According to Variety, the U.S. version of the app now displays the message 'The copyright owner hasn't made this sound available in your country' on that clip. Variety After pulling 'August,' Swift also muted songs featured in older Team Trump videos posted the previous autumn.
The Hill reported on 11 August that the White House and Trump campaign removed Swift's music from several online videos following her previous opposition to its use. The Hill
The White House TikTok account has a pattern of using popular music in its posts. A November 2025 video titled 'OUR VIBES' featured a Swift song and drew 1.4 million likes and 18,500 comments. A February 2026 post titled 'Lethality | White Bounce House' also used Swift's music, as did a July 2026 clip titled 'Welcome to America's eras tour,' which framed a visit with music and sticker text around a welcoming, solidarity-themed message. Variety separately reported in November 2025 that the White House had used a Swift song in a pro-Trump TikTok video, describing the clip as based on and soundtracked by the track.
Swift is not the only artist whose music has been pulled from a White House TikTok post. The account previously used Bad Bunny's song 'La Mudanza' in a deportation-related video; that song was later muted on the clip, without comment from Bad Bunny.
What gives these removals teeth is the mechanism behind them. On TikTok, sounds are tied to copyright controls that let rights holders restrict where and how their music appears. When Swift's team acts, the song doesn't just disappear — the platform surfaces a notice to viewers explaining that the copyright owner pulled it.
For an artist of Swift's commercial scale, the calculus is straightforward: controlling where her catalogue appears is both a legal right and a public statement. The White House account, for its part, has not commented on the removals.
