Overview
- Team Trump posted an edited video using Swift’s “august” that included a taunting caption and users in the U.S. noticed the song had been stripped with a TikTok message saying the sound was not made available, a change first reported after posts from earlier in the week.
- Reporting from multiple outlets shows other Trump-related videos that used Swift tracks — including earlier posts that used “Father Figure” and “Opalite” — have also lost audio, while some Trump or White House videos with Swift songs remain audible.
- TikTok’s on-video notice attributes the removals to the copyright owner rather than the platform, but neither Taylor Swift, her representatives, record labels, nor the Trump campaign has publicly confirmed who requested the blocks.
- Team Trump responded to the removals by posting further provocative content that repurposed Swift imagery and song titles, and fans publicly celebrated the missing audio in comments on the campaign’s posts.
- This episode fits a wider trend of musicians seeking to prevent their work from being used on political accounts and highlights how platform licensing tools and rights-holder decisions can selectively limit song use on social apps.