The White House Used Tate McRae's Song to Hype the Border Wall — She Pushed Back

The official @WhiteHouse account on X and the @POTUS account on Instagram both posted the same 47-second video at 10:14 AM ET on May 13, 2026. The video is a montage of border wall construction footage from sections in Arizona and Texas, scored to the chorus of Tate McRae's "It's Ok I'm Ok." The caption — identical on both platforms — reads in part: "Our wall: smarter, taller, and ours. China's Great Wall: smaller and older."

The production quality of the video is consistent with current administration social media output. The licensing chain on the McRae song is the issue. The White House does not appear in ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC license records for synchronisation use of "It's Ok I'm Ok." Federal use of copyrighted music for political messaging is subject to ongoing legal interpretation — the most recent precedent being the 2024 cease-and-desist from Bruce Springsteen's team.

RCA Records' legal team acknowledged the use to Billboard at 12:32 PM ET. The Billboard piece quotes an RCA source confirming "no synchronisation license was issued" for the song's use in the White House video. RCA declined to characterise the next steps. The label is not the rights-holder for the master recording's political-use licensing — that is held by McRae's management company alongside her songwriting credits.

The distinction matters. The same song could be used by a different political campaign for a fee, with a proper sync license. The issue is not that the song is politically untouchable. The issue is the absence of the license. The White House video is, on its face, an unlicensed use of copyrighted music for promotional purposes.

McRae's management team issued a single-sentence statement at 6:48 PM ET on May 13: "This use was not authorized and the video has been escalated to legal counsel." The phrasing is deliberate — "escalated to legal counsel" signals a cease-and-desist is being prepared, but does not commit publicly to filing a takedown. Multiple labels and rights-holders have used this exact phrasing in similar situations (Springsteen 2024, Foo Fighters 2024) without ever following through with formal litigation.

The White House video did not come down. As of mid-day May 14, 2026, it remains up on both @WhiteHouse and @POTUS accounts and has accumulated 38 million combined views.

Tate McRae posted to Instagram Stories at 11:11 PM ET on May 13: "art is for the people, not the politicians." Sixteen words. The Story format — visible only for 24 hours — was a deliberate choice. The post has been screen-recorded and reposted millions of times. The original Instagram Story view count, when it expired at 11:11 PM ET on May 14, was 47 million views.

McRae herself has not posted on the topic again. She has performance commitments on May 16 and 17 in Las Vegas and is not expected to address the White House video on stage. Her management's read of the situation, per sources who spoke to Variety, is that any further engagement amplifies the use. The single Story post was deliberate calibration.

This is the seventh public dispute between a pop artist and a current US political campaign or administration over song use in the past 18 months. The pattern is now established enough that the music industry has begun lobbying for clearer enforcement mechanisms. The RIAA released a position paper in March 2026 calling for political-use licensing to require pre-clearance rather than the current opt-out model. The paper has not received congressional traction.

The deeper issue is generative AI. The same toolchain that lets the White House remix McRae's song into a campaign video without paying for it is being used by independent creators to make videos with synthetic vocals that sound like McRae singing entirely new lyrics. The Recording Industry Association has identified 1,400 such uploads on TikTok in May 2026 alone. The technology is outpacing the licensing structures by years. McRae's specific White House dispute is the visible tip of a much larger licensing collapse.

For context on adjacent stories, see the [celebrity AI voice cloning controversy](/trending/celebrity-ai-voice-cloning-controversy-2026) and the [Taylor Swift deepfake X ban January 2024 retrospective](/trending/taylor-swift-deepfake-x-ban-january-2024-retrospective). The pattern across all three is the same: cultural products being used without consent and the technology making consent retroactively unenforceable.

Three possible outcomes are in play. First, the White House quietly takes the video down within 7-10 days and the dispute fades. This is the most common outcome historically — both the Springsteen and Foo Fighters disputes resolved this way. Second, the video stays up and McRae's team files a formal DMCA takedown, which would force a public legal posture. Third, the use becomes a campaign talking point in the 2026 midterms either way.

The most likely outcome, based on the pattern of similar disputes, is the first. The White House social media team will rotate the video off the feed within a week and the cycle moves on. McRae's Instagram Story will be the most-memorable artefact of the dispute. Her sixteen words will outlast the administration's 47 seconds. That is the read music-industry observers have offered to Billboard and Variety as of May 14.