The Trump White House is under fire for using Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia” in a TikTok posted on Monday, November 4. The patriotic video pairs the number-one hit with images of President Donald Trump and the U.S. military. This is despite the president having posted messages on social media denouncing the popular artist and Taylor Swift publicly supporting Kamala Harris and criticizing Trump’s policies. Commenters on TikTok have come out to attack the video for using her song for political reasons, while The White House admits to posting the video to troll media outlets.
White House admits to trolling media with Taylor Swift Tiktok
The White House’s TikTok video using Taylor Swift’s song uses the post-chorus of “The Life of Ophelia,” taking the lyrics and placing them over various images, like Donald Trump kissing the American flag and cooking fries at McDonalds. The last image replaces the last line “The Fate of Ophelia” with “The Fate of America.”
The video, captioned with “OUR VIBES,” has since received over 570,000 likes and reposted over 165,000 times on the platform.
Many commenters on TikTok have bashed The White House for the video. “TAYLOR DOES NOT EVEN LIKE YALL,” one user wrote. Another writes, “his obsession with her needs to be studied it’s wild really.” Many expect a cease-and-desist order or a lawsuit from Taylor Swift to come soon.
Another commenter says, “what happened to taylor swift is no longer hot?” This references President Trump writing on Truth Social during this summer: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?'” His comments came after Swift publicly endorsed Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.
That said, other commenters support the video, saying that it is “pure gold” and another posting, “Ohhh Taylor is going to hate you’re using her song” with a bunch of laughing and clapping emojis.
At the time of writing, Taylor Swift has not yet responded to the TikTok video. When Variety reached out to The White House on the video, an official replied, “We made this video because we knew fake news media brands like Variety would breathlessly amplify them. Congrats, you got played.”
