Rhiannon Ingle
Kesha has called out the White House for using one of her songs in a video to 'incite violence and threaten war'.
Last month (10 February), the institution shared a video montage of US warplanes appearing to destroy naval targets on its official TikTok account, which boasts more than 5.5 million followers, to Kesha's hit 2011 track 'Blow'.
The 31-second clip in question was captioned 'Lethality', alongside a fire emoji and an eagle emoji.
Kesha has since taken to X on Monday (2 March) to address the situation after catching light of the song usage.
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The statement, shared with her 2.8 million followers, begins: "It's come to my attention that the White House has used one of my songs on TikTok to incite violence and threaten war.
"Trying to make light of war is disgusting and inhumane. I absolutely do NOT approve of my music being used to promote violence of any kind."
The 'Die Young' singer continued: "Love always trumps hate. Please love yourself and each other in times like this. This show of blatant disregard for human life and quite frankly this attack on all of our nervous systems is the opposite of what I stand for."
Kesha, 39, concluded the statement, urging her fans: "Also, don't let this distract us from the fact that criminal predator Donald Trump appears in the Files over a million times."
Kesha appeared to be making a reference to the Epstein files, in which Trump appears multiple times.
The 79-year-old Republican, who socialised and partied with the late convicted sex offender in the 1990s and 2000s, before their fallout, has continuously denied any wrongdoing or any knowledge of Epstein's crimes, and the investigative material to date has yet to reveal any specific compromising details.
Additionally, it's important to note that being mentioned in the files is not indicative of any wrongdoing.
In a follow-up statement, Kesha added: "Stop using my music, perverts @WhiteHouse."
It didn't take long for White House director of communications Steven Cheung to respond to Kesha's statement, taking to X earlier today (3 March), writing: "All these 'singers' keep falling for this.
"This just gives us more attention and more view counts to our videos because people want to see what they’re b*ching about."
Cheung rounded off his response adding: "Thank you for your attention to this matter."
The White House has previously come under fire for using celebrities' music in its social media videos.
Sabrina Carpenter previously hit out after the White House shared a video to its official X account showing protests against ICE agents before panning to multiple arrests to the soundtrack of the song 'Juno' as the lyrics 'Have you ever tried this one?' are repeated three times.
After catching light of the video, Sabrina took to X to hit out back in December: "This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda."
Though the White House later removed the clip from social media, a spokesperson for the administration shared a subsequent statement using the 26-year-old artist's own lyrics and album title against her.
"Here’s a Short n' Sweet message for Sabrina Carpenter," Abigail Jackson told Newsweek. "We won’t apologise for deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country.
"Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?"
For reference, the latter line was taken directly from Carpenter's track 'Manchild', while Short n' Sweet is the title of her sixth studio album.