Last month, the White House X account posted an illustration of President Trump looking determined, framed by eagles, fireworks, the American flag and a cloud of cash.
"Six months in. All gas. No brakes. The winning will continue. The deportations will continue. The memes will continue," the post read.
And the memes have continued, as has the controversy that inevitably follows. The White House's X account, as well as that of the Department of Homeland Security, have for months been posting a steady stream of content celebrating the administration, especially its aggressive immigration crackdown, often framed as ironic comedy. The posts illustrate the Trump administration's project of redefining who belongs in the United States, and promote its policies.
In recent weeks, many posts have highlighted DHS's push to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as the agency's vision of the homeland. They range from World War II-style recruitment posters to artwork evoking nostalgic versions of America's past, such as an 1872 painting that positively depicts white settlers displacing Native Americans.
The accounts also periodically post videos in the style of viral internet trends. One from February includes footage of immigrants boarding planes with handcuffs and chains rattling, captioned "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight," referring to a genre of videos featuring sounds meant to evoke a calming and pleasant experience.
The posts are deeply polarizing: popular among a swath of Trump fans who share them and comment favorably, while generating outcry from critics who object to their tone and content.
This approach "speaks to the people who enjoy the irreverence, who enjoy the cruelty, who enjoy the 'owning the libs,'" said Ryan Milner, a professor of communication at the College of Charleston who studies Internet culture. "Especially how it causes people to freak out and cry foul. I think that's part of the point with these."
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson didn't directly respond to NPR's questions for this story. She sent an emailed statement saying: "The White House consistently posts banger memes," and went on to mock NPR.
In response to NPR's questions about the agency's social media posts, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin called the inquiry "deranged and delusional." She continued: "If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails, forded the rivers, and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook."
She added, "This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it."
'Protect. Serve. Deport.'
As DHS steps up its campaign to hire some 10,000 new ICE agents, fueled by a budget influx from Trump's tax cut and spending bill, the agency's social media accounts have been flush with recruitment imagery. It's a mix of retro-style Uncle Sam posters, patriotic-themed art and videos of armed agents carrying out raids.
The blend of nostalgia, aggression and calls to "Save America," "Secure the Golden Age" and "Protect. Serve. Deport." evoke a nationalist, white-centered view of who the American homeland is for, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
The images conjure a narrative that "we had a wonderful white civilization and culture that has been decimated by these people who don't belong here, who just happen to not be white people for the most part," Beirich said. They contribute to the idea that "those people are violent invaders who need to be repelled by military force, need to be dragged in the streets, taken away, put in vans, removed — if we want that white culture to ever flourish again," she said.
She added that with posts like these, DHS is "just saying the quiet part out loud, and it's the sort of baldness of doing it that's amazing to me."
After DHS posted John Gast's 1872 painting "American Progress" in late July with the caption "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending," the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, where the original painting is displayed, was flooded with inquiries.
"American Progress" gives an "idealized presentation" of American westward expansion in the post-Civil War era that erases conflict and violence, said Stephen Aron, the museum's director, president and CEO. The painting has become known as a depiction of the 19th-century concept of "manifest destiny," the belief that white settlers were destined by God to expand across the North American continent. It was originally intended to be widely reproduced in guidebooks promoting westward migration.
In Aron's description, the painting shows Native Americans and bison "peacefully mak[ing] way" as a "parade of white pioneer types move across the continent." They are led by a large, floating blonde female figure in a white gown, with a school book in one hand and telegraph wire in the other, as "a symbol of civilizing progress."
"This is a whitening vision of the West," Aron said.
At the Autry Museum, pieces by Native American artists are displayed facing the Gast painting and others like it, serving, in Aron's words, as "a reminder of who was here first — whose heritage, whose homeland."
Beirich said it is disturbing that DHS is celebrating a racist depiction of western expansion. "The fact that they're using that as a way to inspire people to sign on to become ICE agents is very troubling, because the whole thing is framed as 'white people need to reclaim their territory,'" Beirich said.
Other DHS posts have been criticized for seeming to reference extremist and neo-Nazi material. A recent image of Uncle Sam at a crossroads is captioned "Which way, American man?" The phrase is similar to a meme sometimes used by right-wing accounts that borrows the title of the 1978 book "Which Way Western Man?" by white nationalist William Gayley Simpson. The book, which was published by a neo-Nazi group, argues Hitler was right and advocates violence against Jews.
"You don't usually see white supremacist propaganda on government websites, but that's what this really is," Beirich said.
When asked whether the DHS post was referencing the book "Which Way Western Man?" McLaughlin said in a statement: "Calling everything you dislike 'Nazi propaganda' is tiresome. Uncle Sam, who represents America, is at a crossroads, pondering which way America should go."
McLaughlin did not respond to NPR's additional question about how DHS intends the white-centric imagery it posts to be interpreted.
A handful of DHS recruitment-themed posts make overt references to the Bible and Christianity, presenting policing the border as a battle between good and evil.
One video posted in late July shows helmeted and heavily armed border agents dressed in military fatigues overlaid with sound from the opening monologue of the 2022 film The Batman. A Bible verse appears on the screen: "'THE WICKED FLEE WHEN NO MAN PURSUETH; BUT THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BOLD AS A LION.' —PROVERBS 28:1."
The post's caption is addressed "TO EVERY CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIEN IN AMERICA" and reads: "Darkness is no longer your ally. You represent an existential threat to the citizens of the United States, and US Border Patrol's Special Operations Group will stop at nothing to hunt you down."
Such videos tie into Christian nationalist ideas and have "a very Crusades feeling," Beirich said. "It taps into deep emotional feelings among some parts of the Christian community. And I'm assuming that's what they're trying to get at."
'oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHiS?'
The DHS posts are just the latest phase of the Trump administration's embrace of inflammatory content and viral memes.
In late March, the White House posted an AI-generated depiction of a Dominican woman crying during her arrest by immigration officers, rendered in the playful animation style of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, the makers of "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro."
After online backlash about the post, White House deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr wrote on X that Americans should be upset by the woman's previous conviction for trafficking fentanyl, not the anime-style post. "The arrests will continue. The memes will continue," he wrote, using what has become a White House tagline.
"This trolling is an active strategy," said Roland Meyer, a professor of digital cultures and arts at the University of Zurich and Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland who has been analyzing the images shared by Trump administration accounts. He described the posts as a demonstration of state power that serve to normalize the administration's aggressive approach towards immigrants, as well as "making fun [of] and trolling those who oppose it."
"They have the power to define who is visible, who is not, what is acceptable and what is not," Meyer said. "They also kind of control the discourse, and also anticipate the reaction to their postings."
The inflammatory tone and style of the posts derives from internet humor that was developed in the 2000s and 2010s on places like Reddit and 4chan, Meyer and Milner said. A core component of that brand of humor is attempting to generate outrage from the left.
White House staffer Dorr's own profile on X includes a banner that reads, "oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHiS?" in the mixed case font used online to signify mockery.
"Attention is the currency. It's clicks, it's views, it's shares," Milner said. "It doesn't matter if somebody is arguing with you in the comments or if somebody is supporting you in the comments. If you have comments, if you have shares, if you have likes, if you have coverage from NPR, that's all good."
By posting images like the Ghiblified arrest, the administration's accounts are participating in a trend of making and sharing AI-generated images that blend pop culture with real-world news events. Trump also frequently posted AI-generated content on his social media channels during the 2024 campaign.
Since January, the White House X account, as well as Trump's Truth Social feed, has continued the habit, sharing apparently AI-generated renderings of the president in a crown on the cover of Time Magazine, in papal robes, striding through the Colosseum and as Superman.
It's often not clear whether the images the administration's accounts share were created by the staffers who run the White House and DHS accounts.
Milner said the administration's use of art and images reminds him of "agitprop" — a portmanteau for agitation and propaganda that was a hallmark of the Soviet Union's communication strategy.
"The goal is to create a sense of culture, to create a sense of ideology and affiliation to that ideology with the art and culture that you're putting out," Milner said.
Artists speak out about use of their work
Some artists have pushed back on Trump administration posts that use their work without their permission.
The British pop artist Jess Glynne, whose song is featured in a viral TikTok trend that pairs audio from a British airline ad promoting a "Jet2 holiday" with video of vacation mishaps, took to Instagram to denounce a White House video that used the audio.
The White House's version, posted to X and Instagram, overlaid the soundtrack from the travel ad on footage of immigrants boarding a deportation flight, with the caption "When ICE books you a one-way Jet2 holiday to deportation."
"This post honestly makes me sick," Glynne wrote. "My music is about love, unity and spreading positivity — never about division or hate." The White House video's audio is now disabled on Instagram.
The band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club took action after its rendition of the song "God's Gonna Cut You Down" was featured in one of DHS's religion-themed recruitment videos last month without the band's permission.
The band posted an open letter to DHS on its social media channels calling for the video to be taken down. "It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights, not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution," the post read.
"For the record, we hereby order @dhsgov to cease and desist the use of our recording and demand that you immediately pull down your video. Oh, and go f… yourselves," the post concluded.
On X, the post now says the video "has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner." The video still appears on Instagram but without any audio. Another DHS video using a Jay-Z song has also been disabled on X due to a copyright claim.
After the DHS account posted a painting of a white couple in a covered wagon cradling an infant with the caption, "Remember your Homeland's Heritage," the artist, Morgan Weistling, posted a statement that temporarily appeared on his website noting that the agency had used his painting without his permission. In addition, the Kinkade Family Foundation disavowed DHS's use of a painting by Thomas Kinkade, who died in 2012.
Attacks on media
The Trump administration also uses social media as an avenue for criticizing news coverage it dislikes. The DHS X account labels articles the agency disagrees with as "FAKE NEWS" and slams what it calls "false sob stories" about the administration's immigration policies. White House communications staff frequently rebuke specific news outlets on their social media accounts.
After a Washington Post article referred to DHS posting an "explicitly racist painting" in reference to "American Progress," McLaughlin wrote on X, "Uh oh— The @washingtonpost must have fallen asleep during their Art History course!" and added, "It is one of the most historically significant paintings of its era."
White House officials have also taken to pointing out publicly available political donations to Democrats made by sources quoted in news coverage in an apparent effort to discredit them as partisan.
Last month, White House communications director Steven Cheung criticized a different Washington Post story that quoted a drone warfare expert about the vulnerability of the U.S. to drone strikes. "The 'expert' they cite throughout the story is a major Democrat donor and longtime sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome," Cheung wrote on X, posting a screenshot of Federal Election Commission records of the individual's political contributions.
White House spokesperson Jackson used the same tactic ahead of publication of this article. After learning that Milner, the College of Charleston professor, would be quoted, Jackson pointed out that public records show that seven years ago he made two donations totaling $30 to ActBlue, which fundraises for Democrats.
"In addition to noting that this so-called expert is a Dem donor, here is a statement from me," Jackson wrote in her email sharing the White House's comment for this story.
Millions of Americans donate to political candidates each cycle. Approximately 15.6 million people donated to congressional and presidential races in 2020, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks money in U.S. politics.
Milner told NPR the White House's comment about him made him "chuckle a little bit" given the small amount he gave several years ago in support of a Democratic congressional candidate.
"I've never been to a fundraising gala or bought a plate anywhere or done much except for ignore a lot of text messages from people asking for more small donations," Milner said.
By labeling someone who gave a trivial donation as a "Dem donor," he said the White House can wave off critiques without addressing their substance.
Milner sees the Trump administration's interactions with news media as "steeped in what we used to call 'lulz' — this kind of trollish online antagonism, this gleeful laughter at somebody else's expense."
To Milner, the gravest potential consequences of the administration's tactic of highlighting past donations of people who speak to journalists is that it chills dissent.
"Whether it's an explicit goal or not, there is a potential to silence people, to make people think twice before they speak up with critiques of the administration because they're going to be named and shamed," Milner said. "And there's an online troll army waiting to act on that."
Copyright 2025 NPR
