White House releases video addressing critical Selena Gomez social media activity

You might think the United States government is pretty busy at the moment—and you can check in with our colleagues over at Splinter if your blood pressure is currently too low from not contemplating all the ways the White House has been busy in the past week-and-change. But, it's like we always say: You're never too busy, or too-allegedly-running-a-country, to shit-talk a famous person on social media.

The famous person in question, of course, being Selena Gomez. (And god damn, what a week to be the PR team for Emilia Pérez, huh?) The Trump White House posted a video on Twitter/X on Friday night that directly tagged Gomez in its criticisms, bringing to the world of formal Presidential communications all the gravitas and decorum previously only associated with the most high-end of desperate engagement trolls. The video was a direct response to an Instagram video Gomez posted, and then deleted, earlier this week, in which she talked through tears about Donald Trump's massive push to deport undocumented immigrants, which has seen more than 7,000 undocumented immigrants arrested in the Christ it's only been 12 days since Trump took office. "All my people are getting attacked, the children," said Gomez, who's been a long-time advocate for those living in America while undocumented, including producing the 2019 Netflix documentary Living Undocumented. "I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something but I can’t."

The White House response video focused on the mothers of three people who were killed by criminals who were living in the U.S. illegally, hewing close to the party line that ICE (which has filled its own social media channels with daily tallies of arrests and catchy features like weekly wrap-ups) is only looking to mass-deport the most dangerous of undocumented people, and also their several thousand closest friends. The video shows the three moms attacking Gomez, with one saying, "Seeing that video, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually genuine and real because she’s an actress," and another stating "I just feel like it’s a ruse to deceive people and to garner sympathy for lawlessness." This video—in which, again, the official communication arm of the United States executive branch is directly targeting one of the only Hollywood stars to speak out about ICE's recent huge upswing in activity for focused attack and harassment—has now been viewed 5.7 million times on the Elon Musk-owned social media site.