The White House has clapped back after a Grammy-winning rock legend mocked one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial rebrands, twice.
John Mellencamp ridiculed Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” during a show in Holmdel, New Jersey, on Saturday as part of his “Dancing Words” tour.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded with a statement to Fox News Digital on Monday, saying, “Nobody in their right mind cares what out-of-touch, woke Hollywood celebrities have to say.” Mellencamp lives in Indiana.
Mellencamp was singing the opening verses of his hit “Pink Houses” when he addressed the crowd directly. “Well, there’s people and more people, what do they know, know, know? Go to work in some high rise, and vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico,” the rock icon sang, before adding, “Wait a minute.”
With his band still playing behind him, he continued sarcastically, “The Gulf of Mexico? Is that right? It’s not the Gulf of America? What a stupid f---ing idea,” as the crowd cheered him on, before diving right back into the song.
Mellencamp made a similar crack days earlier at a different tour stop, asking the crowd, “Is it really still the Gulf of Mexico?” to shouts of “Yes!” before adding, “They changed the name of it, but I’m not buying it. It’s the Gulf of Mexico.” His next show is scheduled for Wednesday in Virginia, with dates booked through the end of September.
The body of water in question has been called the Gulf of Mexico since the 1550s. Trump signed the executive order renaming it in January 2025, and later revealed he’d wanted to go even further.
“I was going to call it the Gulf of Trump, but I thought I would be killed if I did that,” Trump said at the White House. “The Gulf of Trump. That does have a good ring, though. Maybe we could do that. It’s not too late,” he added. “We have the Gulf of America now, it’s great.”
Trump claimed he was “always bothered” by the original name, arguing “we have most of the shoreline. Mexico has a small percentage, about 8 percent. We have 92 percent. And I said, why? Why is it the Gulf of Mexico? It should be the Gulf of America.”
In reality, the shoreline is nearly evenly split between the two countries, with Cuba claiming a little over 5 percent of the waters as well.
The White House, meanwhile, is also warring with a pop star. Katy Perry said she was “deeply appalled and angry” after her 2010 hit “Firework” was used in a White House TikTok montage of military strike footage titled “Iran has been warned,” synced to the lyric “Boom boom boom.”
Perry said she “was not asked” about the use of her song and “absolutely do not condone it,” adding, “To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.” While the montage remains up, “Firework” has since been pulled from the TikTok video.
The White House didn’t back down. On Monday, its TikTok account posted a new video using Perry’s 2012 song “Part of Me,” splicing footage of the singer herself, taken from the track’s military-themed music video, alongside images of Trump and fighter jets. Trump aide Kaelan Dorr posted the new video on X, tagging Perry with a simple “Hi” and a waving hand emoji.
Other artists who have pushed back against the administration’s use of their music include Bruce Springsteen, Sabrina Carpenter, Neil Young, Jack White, Céline Dion, Kesha and Ariana Grande.
