Cruel Communications
What exactly is this White House trying to say to us?
Justin Baragona of The Independent reached out to me for a quote a few weeks ago about how the White House communications team has made “trolling” their modus operandi and it forced me to think a little deeper about the substance and style of the office’s social media output.
Justin asked in the piece (link here):
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?
Admittedly, I hadn’t really been thinking about the “why” because everything MAGA does feels sort of primal and off-the-cuff. They posted an AI cartoon that encourages people to laugh at a crying immigrant back in March. Trump has also shared videos hyping those flights carrying immigrants to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador, set to music that sounds like WWE entrance music. They have also buoyed propaganda about Kilmar Abrego Garcia created by Geoffrey Martin, a bigoted and pretentious social media troll who goes by the pseudonym “Captive Dreamer.”
If Trump’s White House team isn’t planning these dark, sort of stupid, sort of insane things as part of a grand strategy, they are at least working towards a goal. I decided to revise the responses I gave to Justin about what this trolling means to better suit the format of a newsletter. I’ve also edited and expanded them and incorporated more recent events.
Here are my thoughts on it.
On the overall mission of the White House press strategy:
What has happened over the last decade is that MAGA, as a cultural phenomenon, has grown so big that they no longer need what we once considered mainstream culture. They may want to keep so-called normies from panicking—look at the post-tariffs timing of Trump’s interviews with ABC News and NBC News—but they know the MAGA base is currently solid and unmovable. It used to be that Trump would need to get his message out through more conventionally liberal channels to retain his base but I believe that's optional for him now.
The White House has bet big on MAGA as a completely separate cultural bubble in the hopes that it will eventually weaken and supplant everything else. That’s why they feel like they can mock suffering immigrants. That’s why they openly try to humiliate the press. They see this as a moment to assert dominance. Based upon the way television news has moved to pacify not only Trump but Trump’s fans, they really do have an open lane to be as aggressive as they want.
The other thing here is that right-leaning people have become inured to cruelty after years of seeing this back-and-forth between “woke” social media posters and their critics. The MAGA base has repeatedly sided with whoever is against “woke” and the people leading that charge have really taken pleasure in saying things that would have seemed more heinous a decade ago. America is more desensitized to open displays of hate than they were during Trump’s first run and the White Houses knows it.
On what may have influenced the White House social media strategy:
The White House’s X account sometimes plays like some of the content you would find on 4chan and 8chan during the first Trump administration. These were the places where pseudonymous fascists would go to post sadistic fantasies about non-white people and liberals.
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. Even if the chan forums drove a lot of traffic during those days, they carried a certain stigma. They were considered bad or taboo websites, even among what I’d guess would be a majority of Trump’s voters.
It’s possible that Trump’s base is unbothered by celebrations of cruelty because they've become so resentful of what they perceive to be liberal scolds. Trump supporters in Michigan just cheered on a White House propaganda video showing the abuse of immigrants in a public setting. Nobody cares anymore about seeming monstrous on the right anymore and that’s obviously dangerous.
On how liberals can respond to the MAGA strategy:
Democrats can't compete with Trump's show because they play the role of antagonists in it. MAGA is essentially a fiction, based upon real people and events, imagining Trump as a good person who actually cares about someone other than himself. Of course, Trump doesn’t care about other people and that’s the secret crux of his appeal. He’s the primal father.
In the MAGA story, Trump goes to war with Democrats, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and transgender people—all villains. There's no way for Democrats to try and wedge their way into that story in front of Trump’s fans and gain any favor with them.
What Trump’s critics can do is keep building an alternative culture to MAGA that will become attractive enough for people to want to step away. Americans need to be reminded that a world outside of MAGA exists and getting huge crowds together is as good a way to make the bullying message seem small. They should also tap into the worlds of music, film, sports, and TV, where possible. If a casual Trump voter is slightly uncomfortable with ICE kidnapping children or whatever other horror, you need to give them a sign that another world is possible.
On whether the White House is scaring off “normal” people:
A strong word of warning on polls: Trump has repeatedly out performed his polling for ten years now and I am confident that these bad numbers don’t paint an accurate portrait of his appeal. We can also go by the Emerson College poll that suggests that the Trump and Harris vote would likely remain unchanged. Additionally, people hate Democrats in almost every poll.
That being said, the White House has decided to reach out only to the MAGA base with their propaganda. Less ideologically driven people have to find the MAGA movement—or cult, as many have called it—attractive enough to join it. If independent minded people are disgusted by what they see, it's eventually a potential recipe for movement collapse.
And, 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 now. That’s a huge problem for them if Trump's poll numbers do actually fade in a serious way. If the White House pivots to a softer tone, they will look weak. Sorry, weren't you the people who used to post torture porn of immigrants last year?
It feels to me like the Trump administration is on this death drive where they will either supplant liberal culture and destroy it or fail and suffer movement collapse. Maybe this is the effect of talking about being in a civil war for a decade now and starting to believe it.
Note: This piece is news analysis and therefore includes my personal opinions. My first book, Strange People on the Hill, will be published with Bold Type/Hachette in 2026.