--- title: Before Trump Veep Joked About Using a Tom Petty Song description: Veep's showrunner jokes that the Trump campaign is "stealing" from his very satiric show. canonical: https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/ author: Melissa Locker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-06-22T15:07:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:01:29.475Z og:title: Trump Isn't the First Presidential Campaign to Use a Tom Petty Song og:description: Veep's showrunner jokes that the Trump campaign is stealing from his very satiric show og:url: https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Isn't the First Presidential Campaign to Use a Tom Petty Song twitter:description: Veep's showrunner jokes that the Trump campaign is stealing from his very satiric show twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Trump Isn't the First Presidential Campaign to Use a Tom Petty Song by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Jun 22, 2020 3:07 PM UTC by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Jun 22, 2020 3:07 PM UTC After [Tom Petty](https://time.com/4965958/best-tom-petty-songs/)’s fight song “Won’t Back Down” was played at Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the artist’s family issued a statement denouncing the use. The family [tweeted a letter](https://twitter.com/tompetty/status/1274527971513004033) saying that the Trump campaign was not authorized to use the song “to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind.” Now, [_Veep_ ](https://time.com/3722623/presidential-candidates-walk-up-music/)showrunner David Mandel has issued a statement that chides the Trump campaign for ripping off his show’s material and tells them how to “deal with the Tom Petty estate”. Artists’ decrying [use of their songs](https://time.com/3722623/presidential-candidates-walk-up-music/) to promote politicians they don’t like or whose policies they don’t agree with has become a hallmark of political campaigns. Like when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker used a Dropkick Murphys song, causing the band to reply that they “[literally hate](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/26/a-band-told-scott-walker-we-literally-hate-you-here-are-the-other-times-musicians-told-politicians-to-stop-using-their-songs/)” him, or when Trump used REM’s “It’s The End of the World As We Know It,” prompting frontman [Michael Stipe](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26373099/rem-trump-song-twitter-copyright/) to [tell the then-candidate off](https://time.com/3686392/campaign-song-artists/?iid=sr-link1) or when [Rage Against the Machine](https://time.com/5851267/rage-against-the-machine-memes/)’s guitarist Tom Morello [called](https://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/17/machine-vs-man-tom-morello-rages-at-paul-ryan/) Paul Ryan “the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.” It has become so commonplace that during _Veep_’s fifth season the writers made it a plot point. “The song thing has been going on for years — it’s not just Trump — where politicians want to use a \[Bruce\] Springsteen song about being a working man and Springsteen hates the candidate,” Mandel [told _The Hollywood Reporter_](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/veep-jonah-campaign-catherine-reveal-897260) back in 2016\. “It seems like Jonah would be hateable to every rock band on earth.” To highlight that point, when Jonah Ryan (played by Timothy Simons) ran for Congress he also opted to use Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” as the soundtrack to his political aspirations—and got increasingly angry letters from the artist about it to great comedic effect. After the Petty family tweeted their statement about Trump’s use of the song, Mandel weighed in with [some advice of sorts](https://twitter.com/DavidHMandel/status/1274584055057494019). Using a NSFW clip from the satiric show, he explained how to “deal with the Tom Petty estate” and issued his own warning to the Trump campaign to “Stop stealing our #veep s–t. It’s like the third time this week.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/"},"headline":"Trump Isn't the First Presidential Campaign to Use a Tom Petty Song","datePublished":"2020-06-22T15:07:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:01:29.475Z","description":"Veep's showrunner jokes that the Trump campaign is stealing from his very satiric show","url":"https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Brief","clickmonsters"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Melissa Locker","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5857067/tom-petty-veep/","name":"Trump Isn't the First Presidential Campaign to Use a Tom Petty Song"}}]}] ```