LIKE, FOLLOW AND SUBSCRIBE — Every White House works hard to amplify the president’s message, communicate an administration’s accomplishments and generally burnish the image of POTUS. But the Trump White House has an ambitious communications goal that reaches beyond traditional practice: Owning the libs. Through the use of an aggressive social media strategy, the White House is both highlighting its policy accomplishments and attempting to rub the left’s face in it with a stream of content designed to delight the GOP base and provoke the opposition. Their efforts to do so are frequently going mega-viral. A video of undocumented immigrants, handcuffed and shackled, boarding a deportation flight with a caption that read “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” posted from the official White House account, racked up over 100 million views on X. On March 10, the White House shared a picture of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student and Palestinian rights activist, with the Hebrew greeting “SHALOM, MAHMOUD,” mocking his activism after his arrest. Last month, the president shared an AI-generated video from his Truth Social account of the Gaza Strip transformed into a beachside resort, where Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sipped cocktails together by a pool. (The video was already circulating online before it was reposted by the president.) The posts are gleeful, irreverent and often deeply offensive to a liberal sensibility — and they’re wildly popular among young, online conservatives who are making up an increasingly large portion of President Donald Trump’s devotees. The genre used to be confined mostly to political hobbyists unaffiliated with any campaign or government official. Now, the ecosystem of the conservative meme factory has found its way into official White House channels. And while Trump isn’t splicing together sizzle reels himself, much of this growing energy on the right is thanks to the history of his own provocative online presence. Now, at the start of his second term, his administration is all but officially adopting the approach as the voice of the White House. “He is fighting against staleness,” said Joshua Scacco, director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at the University of South Florida. “He’s fighting against approaches that he himself has now normalized.” On Valentine’s Day, the White House X account drew more than 37 millions views to its inflammatory take on a traditional Feb. 14 refrain . “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you,” read the message, which featured a pink backdrop emblazoned with hearts and the faces of Trump and his hardline border czar Tom Homan. Earlier this week, the White House shared another deportation video, using the band Semisonic’s 1998 hit “Closing Time,” to warn undocumented immigrants: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” At the heart of Trump 2.0’s social media strategy is a modern interpretation of a musty job — the president as online influencer. “Social media generally is defined by trends, just like anything in culture, and understanding those trends and embracing them to deliver a message is extremely important to us,” said an administration official granted anonymity to speak candidly about White House social media strategy. The nod to ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is evidence of the embrace of those trends. An online fad for years . ASMR refers to a bodily sensation triggered by an audio or visual stimuli such as whispering, tapping nails, or crinkling paper in front of a microphone, meant to make viewers feel at peace. The White House’s deportation ASMR video was a wink at that trend, suggesting that watching people being deported can be calming. It had the additional benefit of underscoring the president’s policy goal of getting tough on immigration. Scacco likened the idea of teasing policy to musicians like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, teasing an album before it’s released. Sometimes these artists take years between new drops and break their status quo with surprise releases or cryptic social media posts, becoming a trending topic for days. “Donald Trump similarly attempts strategies in the political sphere to gain attention ... because he understands that his political power and cultural power is tied to attention,” said Scacco. “Because of that, the ways in which he is calculating how to gain attention is by increasingly what they might perceive to be out of bounds communication.” The antagonize-and-conquer strategy has delighted a segment of the MAGA base, but it has limits. Replies to the Trump-Gaza video are full of people saying they support Trump, but not the over-the-top video. Some took issue with the golden statues of Trump and a shot of bearded belly dancers, swaying by the beach. “This may be trolling, but many of us (your supporters) are scratching our heads over this one,” read one reply . Thus far, the Trump team has paid no heed to the objections. Like all of the social media controversies of Trump’s past, the assumption is that his supporters will eventually ignore them or get on board. And they have reason to think so — every time the administration has crossed what looked like a line, they ended up just moving the window of acceptable online discourse. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at jbenn@politico.com .
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