A White House TikTok video celebrating ICE-led deportations went silent on Friday after singer Zara Larsson tore into the administration for using her song “Midnight Sun” in the post.
The Swedish artist took to TikTok, flashed an “L” sign with her thumb and index finger, and called the White House “losers” for borrowing a tune that celebrates the joy of Scandinavian nature to soundtrack a celebration of mass deportations.
“It’s just so f---ing uncool,” she told 12.5 million TikTok followers on Thursday. “You guys are such f---ing losers.”
By Friday morning, the video had gone silent and displayed the message: “This sound is unavailable.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether TikTok had acted to protect Larsson’s work or the White House had muted the video. Representatives for the platform and the administration could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday.
“If you want to talk about politics and immigration politics, fine,” Larsson said. “But that’s really not what this is. This video is so dehumanizing.”
The White House video appeared to show agents arresting men, implying that they were undocumented immigrants.
Larsson said she was struck that many of the detainees appeared to be wearing neon-colored protective work clothes, the kind common on construction sites or on the highway.
“These people in this video, they’re real people. There’s a f---ing guy in there with construction wear,” Larsson said. “He’s working and a vast majority of these people who are undocumented are regular people with jobs. They’re just trying to have a better future. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you would do this video. ”
The 28-year-old Stockholm native said she’s keenly aware of the opportunities afforded to her growing up in Sweden.
“I consider myself so lucky with the life that I’ve been dealt. The fact that I’m born in Sweden, I have healthcare, I’ve had an education, I’ve had all these opportunities just laid out in front of me,” the artist said.
“I can travel, I get to do all of these amazing things — that’s luck. That’s luck. So much of that is luck, and there, there’s people out there who are who are not that lucky, and they want to have a better life for their families or for themselves and their children.”
Larrson has rarely shied away from using her platform to express her views.
She’s been, for years, highly critical of Chris Brown and his past incidents of domestic violence.
“There are so many artists I have blocked on Spotify, and all of them are, like, abusers,” Larsson told Cosmopolitan earlier this year. “You certainly wouldn’t find, like, a Chris Brown song.”
Also this year, Larsson said she lost a $3 million brand deal over a dark joke she made to support a fan who revealed she’d gotten an abortion after one of the singer-songwriter’s shows.
