Taylor Swift’s song “August” disappeared from a Team Trump TikTok video on Friday, days after the account used the track in a clip celebrating President Donald Trump and taunted the pop star in its caption.
The @TeamTrump account, which has 14 million followers and launched ahead of the 2024 election, posted the video earlier in the week using the song from Swift’s 2020 album “Folklore.” The clip showed Trump and first lady Melania Trump standing on a balcony watching fireworks, overlaid with text reading, “Mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president.”
The caption needled Swift directly.
“I’m sure @Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song! #taylorswift #maga #august,” the account wrote.
@teamtrump I’m sure @Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song! #taylorswift #maga #august ♬ som original – ⸆⸉ ོ
U.S. users noticed Friday evening that the audio had been stripped. A message on the video now reads that the copyright owner has not made the sound available. Neither Swift’s representatives nor the Trump campaign has said what caused the removal, and it remains unclear whether Swift or the rights holders for her music pulled the track.
Swift’s fans celebrated the disappearance in the comments.
“TAYLOR REMOVING THE AUDIO QUEEEEEEN,” one user wrote.
Rather than drop the exchange, Team Trump leaned in. The account posted a follow-up TikTok using a live version of Swift’s 2012 track “Red,” pairing it with mocked-up album artwork featuring Trump’s face and a fake “Red (Trump’s Version)” playlist.
“Did you know Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party,” the post read.
The video rewrote several of Swift’s song titles to fit Republican messaging. “Everything Has Changed” became “Everything Has Changed (At Our Southern Border),” while “The Last Time” was reworked to “The Last Time (An Autopen Runs the Country).”
“August” was not the only song scrubbed from the account. Videos using Swift’s 2025 tracks “Father Figure” and “Opalite” also lost their audio, while a clip on the White House TikTok soundtracked with her song “The Fate of Ophelia” remained available.
Trump declared “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on Truth Social in 2024 and later said the pop star was “no longer hot,” after Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president ahead of the 2024 election. A month before that endorsement, Trump shared AI-generated images falsely suggesting Swift had backed his campaign, including one portraying her as Uncle Sam.