It began with a picture of Trump as a king mocked up on a faux Time journal cowl. Since then it’s developed right into a full-blown phenomenon, one teachers are calling “slopaganda” – an unholy alliance of simply accessible AI instruments and political messaging. “Shitposting”, the publishing of intentionally crude, offensive content material on-line to impress a response, has reached the extent of “institutional shitposting”, in accordance with Know Your Meme’s editor Don Caldwell. That is trolling as official authorities communication. And no one is extra expert at it than the Trump administration – a authorities that has not solely allowed the AI business all of the regulative freedom it wishes, however has embraced the expertise for its personal in-house functions. Listed here are 10 of essentially the most vital faux pictures the White Home has put out to this point.
Trump as king
19 February 2025
The primary AI picture posted by the White Home X account units the tone for Trump’s second presidency – marking a turning level through which the shitposting that had been related to the far-right on-line tradition that introduced Trump to energy moved from fringe message boards, resembling 4chan and Reddit, to mainstream platforms.
The picture was posted alongside an announcement of the repeal of New York Metropolis’s congestion pricing, and leant into fears that Trump would govern as a king. The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, held up the picture at a press convention when she introduced that she would defy makes an attempt to dam the congestion cost: “New York hasn’t laboured beneath a king in over 250 years. We certain as hell aren’t going to start out now.” The congestion cost stays in impact.
In one other submit on Reality Social in October, the president posted an AI video depicting himself as a president-king, crown on head, flying over “No Kings” protesters in a jet fighter and dumping faeces on them. The Home speaker, Mike Johnson, defended the submit, saying: “The president makes use of social media to make some extent. You may argue that he’s most likely the simplest one that’s ever used social media for that. He’s utilizing satire to make some extent.”
Studio Ghibli meme of a lady being deported
27 March 2025
OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli-inspired meme generator turned a sensation in March 2025, with its uncanny capability to translate any picture into the beloved anime studio’s home model (with out Studio Ghibli’s permission or approval).
The White Home utilized it to a lady in tears as she was arrested by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) brokers earlier than being deported. The unique {photograph}, and the girl’s title and alleged crimes, are additionally included within the submit.
For Caldwell, this demonstrated simply how updated the White Home is with on-line tendencies. “They’re hopping on brand-new, recent memes,” he says. He suspects White Home staffers is likely to be common guests to Know Your Meme. “The Studio Ghibli meme pattern kicked off on March 25 on X; we lined it the next day; after which the White Home lined it the day after that.”
Trump as Pope
3 Might 2025
This picture is proof of Trump’s willingness and skill to insert himself into any dialog, even ones that don’t have anything to do with him, and reveals how efficient that may be.
Predictably, the picture went viral, made world headlines and was met with outrage from Catholic teams and politicians. “There’s nothing intelligent or humorous about this picture, Mr President,” wrote the New York State Catholic Convention. “We simply buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a brand new successor of St Peter. Don’t mock us.”
As so usually occurs with such shitposting, those that took offence had been accused of missing a way of humour. “They will’t take a joke?” Trump stated quickly after at a press convention. “You don’t imply the Catholics, you imply the faux information media … the Catholics cherished it.”
Trump as Jedi
4 Might 2025
Trump has been the topic of flattering fan artwork all through his political profession (bear in mind the digital Trump buying and selling playing cards?), however AI has made the job an entire lot simpler. On 4 Might, the White Home crashed Star Wars followers’ big day with this picture of the president as a jacked Jedi, lightsaber in hand, garlanded by flags and eagles. Who cares if his lightsaber is the flawed color (the great guys’ are blue), or that the White Home’s declare to be the Insurrection not the Empire rang laughably hole? This was pure fantasy artwork.
In 2022, considered one of Trump’s buying and selling playing cards clumsily grafted his headshot on to a superhero physique; final July he was barely much less clumsily grafted on to the physique of Superman, to gatecrash the launch of the brand new film. The identical month, the White Home portrayed a besuited Trump heroically striding into the Colosseum. Followers and allies have generated reams of comparable content material themselves.
Hakeem Jeffries as a Mexican
29 October 2025
Why did the White Home select to place the Democratic home chief Hakeem Jeffries and the senate chief Chuck Schumer in sombreros and have them holding plates of tacos? It doesn’t matter. They appear a bit foolish, and it’s provocatively offensive, and as soon as once more, the world’s consideration is colonised.
The picture illustrates how tough it’s to answer this kind of content material. It’s a part of a operating joke, stretching again to a deepfake video Trump posted a month earlier, which slapped a crude sombrero and moustache filter over Jeffries. That video was roundly condemned as offensive and racist , not least by Jeffries himself (who replied by posting a real picture of Trump with the intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein) . The Trump administration then doubled down, enjoying the video on a loop on screens within the White Home briefing room for a number of hours and creating extra pictures in an identical vein, which stored the trolling going.
Welcome to the Golden Age
1 January 2026
Few folks outdoors the Trump administration consider the US is in a “golden age”, however that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeating the declare. In January, the White Home posted an AI video of a golden White Home facade behind a bathe of gold cash with the textual content “The White Home? She’s in her Golden Age”, backed by Bruno Mars’ observe 24K Magic.
Even when Trump’s Midas contact is extra a figment of his creativeness, this kind of wishcasting is simpler than it seems. In accordance with one paper by the teachers Michał Klincewicz, Mark Alfano and Amir Ebrahimi Fard – who coined the time period “slopaganda” – “neural representations of data that had been proven to be false proceed to affect folks’s beliefs and reasoning after being corrected”. In different phrases, even when you already know it’s faux, your mind nonetheless form of believes it.
Which Approach, Greenland Man?
14 January 2026
On the face of it, this looks like an easy “Trump desires Greenland” submit. Nonetheless, it has a a lot darker message.
Once more, the submit is riffing on a preferred meme, Caldwell explains: the “dramatic crossroads” picture originated with the manga collection Yu-Gi-Oh!, and began gaining traction on-line round 2021.
The slogan “Which method, Greenland man?” appears to reference a 1978 neo-Nazi textual content titled Which Approach, Western Man?, through which the white supremacist writer William Gayley Simpson referred to as for violence in opposition to and the deportation of Jews and Black folks, and argued that Hitler was proper.
“It’s completely surprising to see such pictures being deployed by this administration,” stated Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the International Venture In opposition to Hate and Extremism, which displays US neo-Nazi teams. “The concept appeals to racists and white supremacists who assume solely white folks needs to be in positions of energy.”
In August, the Division of Homeland Safety posted a mock recruitment advert for ICE with a picture of Uncle Sam at a crossroads and the slogan: “Which method, American man?” Earlier this month, the US Labor Division posted a picture with the slogan: “One Homeland. One Folks. One Heritage”. Critics identified that it had overtones of Hitler’s “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“One folks, one realm, one chief”).
Stand with ICE Propaganda poster
15 January 2026
“AI is excellent at consistently reiterating pictures from the previous, so it could actually create this nostalgic imagery of traditionalism,” says Daniel de Zeeuw, an assistant professor in digital media tradition on the College of Amsterdam. Thus the extremist messages of the current – resembling ICE’s militarised policing – may be inserted into extra reassuring and acquainted graphic types, resembling patriotic recruitment posters, 80s action-movie posters or Nineteen Fifties public data campaigns (as with a current picture of Trump as a pleasant milkman).
AI is inherently backward-looking, says de Zeeuw, as it’s ate up historic pictures. This aesthetic is consistent with the Make America Nice Once more motion, which is continually evoking a “higher” previous. One other stark instance was the Division of Homeland Safety’s chilling submit from final December: a picture of a classic automotive at a abandoned, palm-fringed seaside with the slogan “America After 100 Million Deportations”. Sarcastically, the unique was painted by a Japanese artist, Hiroshi Nagai, who complained that it had been used with out his permission.
The arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong
22 January 2026
“It’s not going to be on Twitter,” stated the agent filming the Minneapolis civil rights lawyer Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of many metropolis’s most distinguished activists, as she was arrested final Thursday. Inside hours, although, it was: the Homeland Safety secretary Kristi Noem posted a nonetheless from the video, through which Armstrong appears composed and reveals little emotion.
Half an hour later, the White Home X account posted a considerably altered model of the identical picture: this time, Armstrong is exaggeratedly upset, tears streaming down her face. Her pores and skin tone additionally seems to have been darkened. The picture was captioned: “Arrested: far-left agitator Nekima Levy Armstrong for orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.” In actual fact, Armstrong was demonstrating at a church service led by an allegedly ICE-affiliated pastor, and was later launched with out cost.
Till this second, the White Home’s AI-generated output had been conspicuously outlandish: there was little hazard of mistaking it for actuality. This picture purports to be an genuine {photograph} – or at the least omits to say that it’s not. It’s not a lot AI-generated trolling as an AI-assisted deepfake.
As with Musk’s just lately shared Grok device, which eliminated ladies and youngsters’s clothes with out their consent, there’s additionally one thing abusive about it: AI has been used to try to humiliate a lady by manipulating her picture, to make her look weaker and extra distressed than she truly was.
The truth that the deepfakery isn’t all that convincing is a part of the purpose, de Zeeuw thinks. “What’s being communicated right here is the falsification itself: you’re exhibiting your capability to falsify pictures, to falsify proof.”
After the fakery had been referred to as out, the White Home deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr posted the response: “Enforcement of the legislation will proceed. The memes will proceed.”
The Nihilistic Penguin
23 January 2026
In response to this picture of Trump and a penguin strolling in direction of a Greenland flag, some observers identified that penguins truly dwell on the south pole. However that’s lacking the purpose of some of these submit, says Robert Topinka, a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, College of London. “Folks proceed to interpret them as in the event that they’re meant to be a official declare, or an argument or a bit of proof, however they’re emotional hooks.” Their objective is to fire up the bottom. “White Home staffers have stated they use AI as a result of it’s the quickest method to get content material out. It’s not the quickest method to say one thing that’s true; it’s the quickest method to push their propaganda.”
To these within the know, this can be a riff on the “nihilist penguin” meme, which has gone viral on TikTok prior to now few weeks. It’s based mostly on a scene from Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary Encounters on the Finish of the World, through which one penguin inexplicably separates from the colony and wanders off in direction of the Antarctic inside, and sure dying. “However why?” Herzog wonders. Many have requested the identical of Trump’s quixotic makes an attempt to accumulate Greenland.
The picture resonates with what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor christened “finish occasions fascism”, says De Zeeuw, the place tech business leaders and their enablers are virtually prepared the top of the world as we all know it, striding in direction of oblivion like Trump and his penguin companion. “It’s like they know they’re transferring towards the top, however they achieve this joyfully.”
