White House social media blurred the lines of reality on Friday, posting montages that intertwined clips from Hollywood blockbusters and video games into real footage of military strikes against Iran.
A 42-second video posted on
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What follows, quickly, are clips of male actors cast as heroes, including Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick,” Mel Gibson in “Braveheart,” Russell Crowe in “Gladiator,” Bryan Cranston in “Breaking Bad” and Keanu Reeves in “John Wick.”
Hollywood heroics are interspersed with footage released by the US military showing actual attacks on various targets.
Actor and filmmaker Ben Stiller on Friday asked the White House to remove a clip from the video for “Tropic Thunder,” a 2008 satirical film about war movies that he directed and co-wrote.
“We never gave them permission and have no interest in being part of their propaganda machine. War is not a movie,” Stiller wrote in X.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth also appears briefly, in a clip taken from a real briefing, where he says “FA” before a clip from a “Transformers” movie says “it’s time to find out,” using a CGI autobot.
The reference here is to a crude expression very popular in the Trump administration, used to describe its uncompromising attitude towards any adversary: ”FAFO”, or “Fuck you and find out.”
In a second post, the White House interspersed real war footage with a scene from the video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” in which the player character is heard repeatedly saying, “Ah, shit, here we go again,” before footage of attacks on Iranian targets.
Trump’s campaign was marked by an anger-inducing communication style, flouting the decorum of past presidents to take advantage of the Internet’s penchant for trolling and dunking, borrowing from video games and movies for memes and creating artificial intelligence posts.
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Trump’s social media hasn’t changed its tone since he took office.
Last month, he posted a racist clip depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys, and he did not apologize for it.
Early in his presidency, when millions of “No Kings” protesters took to the streets across the United States to denounce his style of government, he posted a fake AI video showing him wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump” that drops excrement on crowds of protesters.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
