The White House’s video Friday began with a brief clip from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It quickly transitioned to footage of the U.S. military bombing an Iranian vehicle.
“Wasted” soon appeared on the screen, the same image that flashes across the game when a player dies.
“L1, R1, SQUARE, R1, LEFT, R2, R1, LEFT, SQUARE, DOWN, L1, L1,” Steven Cheung, the White House’s communications director, tweeted as he posted the Grand Theft Auto cheat code to unlock unlimited ammunition for the user-controlled player.
There were more in recent days: A video titled “STRIKE,” featuring clips of bowling and bombings, another connecting baseball bombs with the real variety, and a post juxtaposing military strikes to Nintendo Wii gaming.
Those are just a handful of the many videos that the White House has published online in the opening days of the war with Iran, offering a window into the Trump administration’s social media strategy around winning support for what President Donald Trump has described as both “major combat operations” and a “short-term excursion.”
So far, the White House has posted roughly a dozen such videos to social media platforms in an effort to hype up its effort and draw attention to its military strikes in Iran, hoping to sell an unpopular conflict.
The montages compared real war with a variety of pop culture imagery including violent video games, movies such as “Tropic Thunder” and “Braveheart,” and even the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.” On Friday afternoon, the White House turned to sports, promoting a video showing MLB stars hitting home runs with every crack of the bat being met with footage of explosions from the battlefield, while cutting a second video comparing missile strikes to heavy hits on the football field.
Those clips have come under scrutiny for comparing actual warfare to violence in fictional universes or sports, with critics saying they show a lack of seriousness that the White House is paying to a war in which Iranian civilians and American troops are being killed and maimed. Two former senior U.S. military officials expressed outrage and disgust to NBC News over the postings.
“It’s absolutely disrespectful to everyone involved, including the Iranians themselves who are at war and disrespectful to the Americans who risked their lives,” one of the former senior military officials said, adding that whoever is creating the videos “thinks this is all some joke.”
Trump has said the war is near its conclusion while simultaneously saying he won’t make a deal to end it without Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and privately showing interest in sending ground troops into the country. The price of oil has seen dramatic fluctuations amid escalating attacks and with Iran effectively shuttering the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in the global energy supply chain.
Hundreds of people have so far been killed in Iran and across the Middle East since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Tehran late last month. Seven American service members have been killed and about 140 troops have been wounded, with nine suffering serious injuries.
“It’s f---ing bull---,” the former senior military official continued. “Nobody thinks this is a good idea.”
The videos mark the latest chapter in the Trump administration’s revamped approach to social media in the president’s second term, shifting its tone to play off of trending memes and link them with the president’s policy objectives. They’ve generated controversy on multiple occasions, including when official administration accounts echoed terminology used by far-right extremists.
The most recent videos have also drawn pushback from those whose footage was included in the montages.
“Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip,” actor and director Ben Stiller, who was the protagonist in the 2008 film, tweeted in response to one of the videos. “We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.”
The White House called the effort a success, pointing to how much attention the videos have brought to the administration’s early wins on the battlefield.
“This is another example of our non-traditional and traditional media strategy, which has proven highly successful,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Over the past few days, the White House videos have generated more than 2 billion impressions. People are talking about the tremendous success of the war and the U.S. Military’s obliteration of Iranian terrorists — and that’s exactly the point.”
The memeified videos are not the only prong of the White House’s social media strategy. The White House has also amplified more traditional government communications. On Wednesday, the White House posted separate clips of Trump and U.S. CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper speaking on the conflict. The White House also tweeted a “mission update” highlighting the number of Iranian targets, including vessels, destroyed.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a separate statement that media outlets want “us to apologize for highlighting the United States Military’s incredible success, but the White House will continue showcasing the many examples of Iran’s ballistic missiles, production facilities, and dreams of owning a nuclear weapon being destroyed in real time.”
Other NATO leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have posted videos of military aircraft and their public remarks overlaid with dramatic music, though they did not similarly weave military footage with video games or movies. Starmer has since deleted such a video from his social media feeds.
Republicans who spoke with NBC News largely praised the posts, with a senior GOP Senate aide calling them “badass.” A former White House official said “many Americans have learned to live” with Trump’s “social media tactics,” adding that the White House’s social media pages “have been granted a creative license to attract new eyeballs and make the political class uncomfortable.”
“By the look of the numbers, it’s working,” this person said.
Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist working with some potential 2028 presidential contenders, called the videos “completely disgusting” and “exactly what you would expect from weak-willed men cosplaying as soldiers.”
“The Trump administration views war as a game and, in my opinion, has acted so cavalierly about the deaths of civilians and American military personnel that it’s completely and totally disturbing,” he said in a message. “It’s a perfect example of the lack of restraint they have as a group and their inability to understand the things they do that make people hate them so much.”
The war memes strategy comes as a new NBC News poll found that a majority of registered voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of tensions with Iran, with most believing the U.S. should not have taken military action. What’s more, two-thirds of voters under 35 said they think the U.S. should not have struck Iran — the highest of any age group polled.
“And I’m sure if you spoke to the people creating these memes, they would say, “Oh, we’re targeting our core demographic — we’re going after young men,’” Nellis said. “But these memes are also incredibly offensive to young men. What do young men want? They don’t want to be shipped off to another illegal forever war and lose their lives … They don’t want this crap and it’s why Trump’s numbers with young men are plummeting.”
