About

President Donald Trump's "Y.M.C.A." White House Exit refers to the reactions to United States President Donald Trump's exit from the White House on January 20th, 2021, the day of President Joe Biden's presidential inauguration, during which the Village People song "Y.M.C.A." played as he boarded the Marine One helicopter.

Origin

On January 20th, 2021, President Donald Trump and his wife former First Lady Melania Trump left the White House grounds, following a speech and boarding Marine One as the Village People song "Y.M.C.A." played on the nearby speaker system (shown below).

Spread

That day, footage of the exit began to spread on Twitter. Vox reporter Aaron Rupar tweeted the video with the caption, "There they go." The post received more than 617,000 views, 5,500 likes and 2,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

there they go pic.twitter.com/F8u14NBs3n

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 20, 2021

Following the post, people began reacting to the video, making jokes and remixes of the moment. Twitter user @isell_Pro_Payne set the song to a clip from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (shown below).

Trump said goodbye to the presidency as The Village People’s “YMCA” played over a loudspeaker. Tested it out on some other famous goodbyes throughout history. pic.twitter.com/GTfITkRlvB

— Big Tater (@isell_Pro_Payne) January 20, 2021

Village People Response

Following the clip's spread, the Village People told the HuffPost^[1] that they did not approve Trump's usage of the song. They said in a statement:

We asked him to cease and desist long ago. However, since he’s a bully, our request was ignored. Thankfully he’s now out of office, so it would seem his abusive use of our music has finally ended. We hope to spearhead a change in copyright law that will give artists and publishers more control over who can and cannot use our music in the public space. Currently there is no limit to blanket licensing.

Various Examples

Funniest moment #Trump leaving his speech… while YMCA plays, Eric tries to kiss dad and gets the cold cheek. pic.twitter.com/ICt1eeg3it

— Boston Robb (@BostonRobb) January 20, 2021

i lost it when newsmax started doing serious textual analysis of what YMCA must mean to trump pic.twitter.com/MPJYDir7D6

— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) January 20, 2021

Search Interest

Not available.

External References