This summer, one of TikTok’s most popular songs is a 22-second Petey Pablo hip-hop mix with an old audio clip of JD Vance—formerly Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick—saying he was “a never Trump guy”.
It has been used in more than 8.5k TikToks since it was created by two independent music producers in July and seized on by Kamala Harris’ supporters wagging their fingers to it swinging their arms some even wishing to turn it into a dance for the song. It was also re-posted by @KamalaHQ, the campaign’s official tiktok handle. The sound of these videos has garnered over forty million views overall according to Zelf, a social video analytics company focused on TikTok.
Taylor Van Kirk, Vance’s spokesperson, responded to the TikTok video with one word: “Cringe.”
“Never Trump Guy” song was made by Carl Dixon and Steve Terrell; Two 34 year-old music producers. When they watched a post on the Harris campaign’s tiktok account that showed Vance making comments again about trump as opposed to footage showing him express current support for him – both were like we saw that really weird kind of melody in how vance spoke,” Terrell said. Dixon said,” We were like what if we put this to a catchy beat?” They said the process took three hours.
Their video starts with someone from Harris’ team asking “So this is really who Donald Trump chose as his running mate?” A different voice then says, “Drop the beat”, followed by Petey Pablo’s ‘Freek-a-Leek’ playing but remixed with Vance saying things like “I’m a never Trump guy” and “I never liked him.”
Sasha Khatami from Virginia stumbled upon this tune on TikTok in July at the tender age of twenty-four years old. She pointed out that everyone now shares opinions through TikTok dances; instead of saying what they think. Khatami made a dance to the “never Trump guy” song, which was followed by hundreds and thousands of views on her post that originally got between 300-1k views. She has since danced in front of landmarks and watched other people perform their version of her shimmy.
