Many supporters of President Donald Trump are not too pleased that several celebrities who attended the 2026 Grammy Awards spoke out against the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown. But experts in political science and public humanities point out a glaring hypocrisy in their criticism.
Billie Eilish, Kehlani, Joni Mitchell and Justin and Hailey Bieber were among the stars who wore pins that read “ICE OUT” on Sunday night to denounce the deadly actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
During her acceptance speech for Best R&B Performance, Kehlani told audience members that they are “stronger in numbers to speak against all the injustice going on in the world right now.”
“I hope everybody is inspired to join together as a community as artists and speak out against what’s going on. And I’m going to leave this and say, fuck ICE,” she said as the crowd cheered loudly.
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When Eilish accepted the award for Song of the Year, she echoed Kehlani’s call and said that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” “Fuck ICE,” she added.
Bad Bunny, who infuriated MAGA world by being chosen to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, condemned ICE as he accepted the Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album.
“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ICE OUT. We are not savage. We are not animals. We are not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans,” the Puerto Rican global superstar said onstage before adding, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
But not only do musicians have a long history of using their art and platforms to speak out against various forms of oppression and injustice — experts in political science and public humanities also point out a glaring issue with the right’s criticism: It’s hypocritical.
“It is more than ironic that MAGA discourse routinely condemns ‘Hollywood elites’ while remaining deeply invested in celebrity as a mode of political authority,” said Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University. “Many of the most visible figures in the Trump era are themselves media elites. They are merely self-styled influencers, brand managers, and aspirational celebrities whose legitimacy is derived less from governance than from visibility. ”
Sarma argued that celebrity politics in American conservatism goes at least as far back as the Reagan presidency, which “normalized the translation of screen charisma into executive authority.”
The scholar cited the examples of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s “performative, media-saturated style of right-wing populism,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former California governor whose “political appeal was inseparable from an exaggerated masculinity cultivated through popular culture.”
Sarma said that this trajectory reached its most “explicit expression” in Trump, “whose political credibility rested on a carefully staged television persona, one that presented the fantasy of business acumen while obscuring the reality beneath it.”
MAGA has been enthusiastically celebrating Nicki Minaj’s support for Trump in recent months.
MAGA acolytes also have no problem embracing the opinions of celebrities they agree with, even when they aren’t politicians. For example, Trump and members of his administration have been enthusiastically flaunting Trump’s support from Nicki Minaj, who has publicly aligned herself with the MAGA movement in recent months despite her past criticism of the president.
Minaj has recently appeared in videos on official White House accounts, and the president invited her to speak at a summit last week celebrating his administration’s launch of investment accounts for children.
“Conservatives routinely rail against ‘Hollywood elites’ and celebrity political interventions — except when a celebrity can be framed as validating Trump,” Alvin B. Tillery Jr., a professor of political science and African American studies at Northwestern University, previously told HuffPost. “At that point, the critique disappears.”
Sarma said that MAGA’s recent embrace of Minaj is “revealing,” but “not in ways that flatter either party.”
“For the GOP, it represents a familiar strategy of symbolic inclusion: the elevation of a highly visible minority figure to signal outreach, without any corresponding commitment to structural change or substantive engagement,” they said, later adding that the dynamic is based on conditionality.
“The welcome extended to Minaj is neither stable nor principled; it is instrumental,” Sarma said. “She is valued insofar as she serves a narrative function, and her tolerance within the movement is contingent on continued utility.”
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Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science and human development and social policy at Northwestern University, said that MAGA’s criticism of celebrities making political speeches at the Grammys is, “of course,” hypocritical.
“But pundits do hypocritical things, and this has long lent itself to a pattern of distrust of political elites by the public,” she said. “At the same time, I think what is really important here is that much of the conservative discourse is not engaging the criticisms of ICE or why there is such a strong, visible response to ICE.”
“And, I think by dismissing any reason that people might be upset, this becomes part of a tactic to draw attention away from why people are upset,” she continued.
MAGA’s reaction to the Grammy speeches is revealing — but it’s important public figures keep speaking up.
Bonilla said that MAGA often responds to its detractors with outrage, and that there’s a strategy behind it: Discredit or diminish the criticism — or the critic.
“When the very basis of democratic accountability is under question, I think that it makes perfect sense that celebrities and public figures engage these types of concerns,” she said before breaking down why engaging in protests and speaking out, as several celebrities at the Grammys did on Sunday, is becoming increasingly important.
“Silence — among celebrities and average citizens alike — can normalize democratic erosion in ways that make it more difficult to fight,” she said.
“Given its lack of demographic diversity, perhaps MAGA might find more support at the Country Music Awards,” said Shaun Harper, a professor of public policy, business and education at the University of Southern California. “But not at the Grammy Awards.”
“Comparatively speaking, significantly fewer people who attend, perform or present and are recognized at the Grammys are in favor of violently separating families, shooting people in the face, snatching health care from millions of musicians and other Americans, eradicating DEI from everything and other centerpieces of the MAGA agenda,” he continued.
Emma McIntyre via Getty Images
Sarma said that MAGA’s outrage over the Grammys stems from a discomfort, especially among those “within the GOP coalition who have begun, however tentatively, to question the moral coherence of MAGA politics, made more fragile thanks to the recent murders by ICE in Minneapolis.”
Last month in Minneapolis, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Good, and then two federal agents fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
Sarma said that MAGA’s angry reaction to the Grammys is a defensive one — “not as a response to what was said, but to the unsettling possibility that the spell might be weakening.”
But Sarma emphasized that it’s a “civic obligation” for those with public visibility to “use their platforms responsibly” by speaking out against the Trump administration.
“The United States finds itself at a critical juncture in its relatively short history,” they said. “When those with the loudest voices decline to speak, they do not remain neutral. Instead, they tacitly enable the conditions under which democratic institutions weaken.”
