Right-wing internet, including political commentators and influencers, has been calling out Billie Eilish’s hypocrisy after her anti-ICE speech delivered at this year’s above-expectationally woke Grammy Awards, held on Sunday, 1 February.
Accepting her award after winning Song of the Year with her brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell, Eilish delivered what was supposed to be the same old, predictable exercise in virtue signaling—a moralizing lecture portraying US President Donald Trump as an autocrat and accusing his administration of trampling on the ‘human rights’ of illegal migrants by enforcing US law.
However, the singer failed to navigate this ‘complex’ task without running headlong into a glaring contradiction. ‘I don’t feel like I need to say anything,’ Eilish began—perhaps the most accurate line of the night—before immediately adding that ‘no one is illegal on stolen land,’ invoking the history of the founding of the United States.
‘I feel really hopeful in this room and like we just need to keep fighting, speaking up, and protesting,’ she continued, wearing an ‘ICE out’ pin on her dress. She then concluded with an explicit ‘F*ck ICE!’, prompting a standing ovation from many in the Hollywood elite crowd for the edgy statement.
Someone should have reminded Billie Eilish of Ricky Gervais’ infamous 2020 Golden Globe speech, where the host opened by warning award winners not to use ‘it as a platform to make a political speech’, because they are in ‘no position to lecture the public about anything’, as they know ‘nothing about the real world’.
Her remarks about ‘no one is illegal on stolen land’ caused an immediate backlash. Many on social media pointed out the stupidity of Eilish’s argument, highlighting that by that logic the singer should give back her $14 million mansion in Los Angeles to the Tongva people, as the land was inhabited by their ancestors before European colonization of America—or at least let some illegals hide there from the evil ICE.
Conservative podcaster Emily Austin posted a viral video mocking Eilish during her speech, mimicking the ‘F*ck ICE’ line while ridiculing the edgy way it was delivered. Uploading her live reaction, Austin captioned the video ‘painful to listen’, garnering over 30 million views and 78,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
Austin later uploaded another video of herself sitting out the ‘standing ovation’ following Billie Eilish’s ‘ICE Out’ speech, describing those celebrating the singer as ‘shameful’. ‘We love our law enforcement,’ she added. In a follow-up post, she said America is a ‘place of opportunity’ and that it would not be one ‘without our law enforcement who protect our freedoms’.
Altogether, the entire Grammy Awards echoed the sentiment of Eilish’s speech, with artists like Bad Bunny—set to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show this Sunday—opening their remarks with lines such as ‘Before I say thanks to God, I gotta say ICE out’, and similar nonsense. Trump himself described the Grammys as the ‘WORST, virtually unwatchable’, and threatened to sue host Trevor Noah for incorrectly joking about him and former US President Bill Clinton together on Epstein Island.
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