Taking their cues from the right-wing culture warriors and edgelords who make up the MAGA media sphere, the Trump administration has made performative cruelty its media strategy blueprint.
With a staff largely comprised of former Fox News hosts, pro-Trump influencers, made-for-TV politicians, and Trump’s “first buddy” Elon Musk, who just so happens to own one of the largest social media platforms in the world, each day has seemingly brought about a new rage baiting stunt in the conservative media complex.
The goal for online behavior and mainstream media engagement remains the same: titillate Trump supporters while angering the left. In a word, trolling.
So far, it’s working, whether it’s Trump’s infomercial for Musk’s electric vehicles, DHS chief Kristi Noem’s cosplay theatrics or FBI Director Kash Patel posting a perp walk photo of a judge he had arrested.
Is this White House’s press strategy nothing more than an offshoot of the conservative media entertainment complex? Are they just trying to “own the libs” and provoke “liberal tears”? Or is there a greater mission in place here with the propagandist-style stunts and toxic social media posts?
“I think it’s all of the above,” author Eoin Higgins, whose new book Owned examines how right-wing tech-billionaires have reshaped the media landscape, told The Independent. “They’re trying to appeal to the ultra-online far right, of course, but they’re also doing the ‘flood the zone’ thing that Stephen Bannon wants them to do. I’d hesitate to call it a strategy; it seems to me more that it’s a number of competing efforts.”
Amid the fallout from ICE illegally deporting a Maryland man to El Salvador, which has seen the administration essentially ignore a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return, the White House has doubled down and accused the man of being an MS-13 gang member involved in human trafficking.
In one instance, they even employed the well-known Counternarratives style created by artist Alexandra Bell, who began reworking New York Times headlines and articles to challenge racial and gender biases she saw in legacy media. Some of her most famous examples centered around the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson protests.
Following another social media trend, the White House has also posted deportation cartoons modeled after the animated films produced by the Japanese film studio Ghibli, after ChatGPT made this option available last month. The most notorious example of this meme came on March 27 when the White House’s official X (formerly Twitter) account posted a Ghibilifed image of a Dominican woman weeping after she was arrested by ICE agents.
The White House and Trump’s acolytes in the MAGA media world believe the president has been given a mandate to take down the “woke” liberal agenda while installing the blueprint laid out by Project 2025, and they’re pushing that message with their whole chest.
“When times get tough, you don’t take a step back; you double down. And if that doesn’t work, you triple down,” the White House communications director Steven Cheung told The Atlantic when asked if Trump ever goes too far with his aggressive rhetoric and self-created reality in his interviews and Truth Social posts.
This quote from Cheung – the combative former UFC flack who now steers the Trump administration’s press and social media strategy – encapsulates how this latest iteration of a Trump White House is reshaping the way a presidential administration communicates with the press and public.
Michael Edison Hayden, an author and expert on far-right extremism, noted that MAGA has grown so big as a cultural phenomenon “that they no longer need to integrate with what we would consider mainstream culture in order to thrive.” According to Hayden, the White House has “bet big on MAGA as a completely separate cultural bubble” in hopes that it can completely replace the legacy media altogether.
“It's a bold play and we will find out whether or not it was completely hubristic in time,” he added. “But that's why they feel like they can mock immigrants so sadistically and openly try to humiliate the press. They think MAGA will supplant the non-MAGA world and this is how they try to assert dominance.”
Still, is this approach working? As we turn the corner on Trump’s first 100 days in office, the president’s approval rating is already at historic lows – and Trump’s chaotic strategy of overwhelming the public isn’t calming fears about his ability to competently run the country.
On the contrary, picking fights with the legacy media and dehumanizing immigrants while suggesting that U.S. citizens may soon be next in line to be sent to a foreign gulag has made independent voters – the ones who helped put Trump back in the White House – turn their backs on him.
According to the latest ABC News poll, only 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job in office – the lowest ever for a president in his first 100 days. The president is underwater on pretty much every issue, including immigration – the central tenet of his campaign platform. Vast majorities believe that his tariff and economic policies will lead to a recession, that he is going too far in trying to expand presidential powers, and that he is crossing the line by targeting his political opponents. In fact, 62 percent of independent voters feel Trump is out of touch with most people’s concerns.
Therefore, is the administration’s combative and polarizing PR strategy effectively turning off most Americans?
“I think that’s part of it, and the repellent agenda that they have,” Higgins, the Owned author, said. “Trump’s largely dispensed with even pretending to fix anything, it’s all vengeance and cruelty.”
Far-right expert Hayden, meanwhile, urged a “strong word of warning” on polls due to Trump regularly outperforming them throughout his decade in politics. At the same time, he noted that “the White House has decided to reach out only to the MAGA base with their propaganda, and the risks of doing that are fairly obvious,” meaning it could potentially spell doom for the movement down the road.
“People have to find the MAGA movement — or cult, as many have called it — attractive enough to join it,” he stated. “If independent-minded people aren't turned on by what they see, it's a potential recipe for movement collapse. They can't risk losing any supporters.”
And it isn’t just independent centrists or left-leaning Democrats who have expressed disapproval with some of the stunts pulled off by this administration in an effort to pander to the right-wing fever swamp crowd.
Even the president’s most fervent supporters lashed out at Attorney General Pam Bondi in late February for failing to deliver on the promised bombshell release of FBI documents related to the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, a subject much of the right has been obsessed with for years. Bondi made a huge show of handing over binders of already public information to pro-Trump influencers, sparking intense backlash among the MAGA faithful.
“I hate to say it, but the American people can’t trust the validity of the Epstein files released today,” far-right extremist Laura Loomer tweeted about the “Epstein Files” fiasco. “It was released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us. I can’t trust anything in the binder. Neither should you.”
Additionally, conservatives have grown increasingly exasperated with Noem, who has play-acted as an ICE agent, firefighter, pilot and Customs and Border Protection officer for social media clips. Having already faced heat for her El Salvador trip to the infamous CECOT prison, where she filmed an Instagram video in front of shirtless prisoners while wearing a $60,000 Rolex, the Homeland Security director was roundly criticized for posting about an ICE raid in Arizona.
Not only was Noem mocked for failing gun safety standards during her latest cosplay performance, she was also blasted for taking Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, a far-right influencer who has been criticized for her Twitter pile-ons, for the “ride-along.” Afterwards, Raichik promoted “exclusive footage” of migrant arrests for her online fans.
“Can we talk about Kristi Noem and these ridiculous photo ops? Why does she have to keep doing this?” former Fox News host turned independent MAGA influencer Megyn Kelly grumbled this month. “Stop with the glam! I mean, she looks like I look right now, but she’s out in the field with her gun, being like we’re gonna go kick some a**! No one wants you there.”
Should we expect criticism from the right to continue over these performative tactics? And are these critiques about the PR strategy itself or the feeling that the administration isn’t following through on some of Trump’s campaign promises?
“If Trump's polls continue to tick down, the sociopaths and narcissists that populate the MAGA influencer realm will start planning for an exit and a rebrand,” Hayden observed. “I don't think campaign promises will factor much into it, unless the influencer's branding has a lane of criticism built into it, like a Nick Fuentes. If Trumpism starts to collapse, and it's palpable, see how they run.”
Even with the White House facing some blowback from the right, the administration hasn’t slowed down when it comes to its 4chan-level trolling tactics.
Patel, meanwhile, may have even violated the Department of Justice’s policies when he posted a photo of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan – who was arrested last week for allegedly obstructing immigration agents – being escorted by federal law enforcement officers in a perp walk.
This also raises another question – who among the MAGA media sphere is the administration taking its cues from and who are they looking to emulate most?
“The White House X account sometimes plays like some of the content you would find on 4chan, 8chan or Gab during the first Trump administration,” Hayden explained. “These were the places where pseudonymous fascists would go to post their sadistic fantasies about non-white people. And what I think we can take away from that is that Trump supporters have been isolated in their own bubble and cooking in propaganda for so long that they don't understand how extreme they've actually become.”
He continued: “Either that or they know and don't care because they've become so resentful. I mention that because those websites were always regarded as fringe, even if many Trump supporters saw content from them during their online MAGA voyage.”
In the end, one has to wonder if the White House’s trolling tactics are “too online” for even the average Trump supporter.
“By choosing 4chan as their voice, the Trump White House has put themselves in a position where they can't pivot into something softer or more compassionate,” Hayden pointed out. “And that is a problem if Trump's poll numbers continue to fade. If they try to pivot to a softer tone, they will look weak.”
Referencing the administration’s social media posts of migrants being deported alongside pop music soundtracks, he said that the White House “has boxed themselves into a position where they must perpetually double down” because they’re “on a sort of death drive where they either supplant liberal culture and destroy it or fail and suffer MAGA movement collapse.”
Higgins, for his part, asserted that the average American is likely not paying attention to this stuff. “They want to know why things are getting more expensive and why the big positive changes haven’t come yet,” he added.
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