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Related Explainer: What's The 'Hostile Government Takeover' Song? @AGiftFromTodd's Viral TikTok Song Featured On 'John Oliver' Explained

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Hostile Government Takeover Song refers to a viral song that gained traction on TikTok in mid-February 2025, after TikToker A Gift From Todd (@agiftfromtodd) posted a video about President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and D.O.G.E. in which he sang the lines, "We're in the middle of a hostile government takeover, I wanna talk about it but I'll be late for work." The song was remixed into a house music track days after it was posted and eventually made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

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Origin

On February 4th, 2025, TikToker[1] @agiftfromtodd posted a video singing the lyrics, "We're in the middle of a hostile government takeover," gathering over 5 million plays and 1.3 million likes in two weeks.

The lyrics to the song are transcribed below:

We’re in the middle of a hostile government takeover
I wanna talk about it but I’ll be late for work
And if you’re saying "Wait a minute, who we have to stop this?"
We had one, but you didn’t want that lady in office.
Now that we’re all part of a Nigerian prince scam
Surprise, surprise, it ended up being a white man
Oh, I just wanna know what the hell do I do?
Probably drink.

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On February 5th, 2025, TikToker[2] @casadimusic posted a video remixing @AGiftFromTodd's "Hostile Government Takeover" song, gathering over 1.2 million plays and 190,000 likes in two weeks.

On February 6th, TikToker[3] @veryveryvinny posted a remix of the song as well, gathering over 1.9 million plays and 360,000 likes in two weeks.

Also in early February 2025, the song was reposted to various subreddits as it spread online, including /r/BlackPeopleComedy[8] and /r/toptalent,[9] each garnering thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments in roughly a week.

The song was reposted to X[7] on February 10th, 2025, by user @citizengatsby, who gathered over 24,000 likes in a week. The artist released an official, full-length version of the song in collaboration with A Gift From Todd on February 14th to Spotify.[5]

On February 11th, American musician and DJ Moby posted his version of the remix to TikTok[4] as well, gathering over 590,000 plays and 98,000 likes in a week.

On February 16th, 2025, British comedian John Oliver featured the song in a segment of his show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about Trump's second term in office, calling it the "perfect encapsulation of this moment."[6] The feature further boosted the song's virality in the following days.



Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References

[1] TikTok – agiftfromtodd

[2] TikTok – casadimusic

[3] TikTok – veryveryvinny

[4]  TikTok – moby

[5] Spotify – Hostile Government Takeover

[6] YouTube – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

[7] Twitter / X – citizengatsby

[8] Reddit – r/BlackPeopleComedy

[9] Reddit – r/toptalent


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