{"id":201685,"date":"2026-09-09T07:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201685\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T07:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:30:11","slug":"with-ai-memes-trump-promotes-mythical-version-of-himself-as-challenges-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/201685\/","title":{"rendered":"With AI memes, Trump promotes mythical version of himself as challenges grow"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 In the real world, President Donald Trump<\/a> is struggling to stop inflation, rout the Iranian government and restore American manufacturing with tariffs.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s a different story in the fantastical vision that he shares with supporters on social media. Over Labor Day weekend, Trump and the White House unleashed an extraordinarily heavy torrent of memes that portrayed the president as singularly powerful.<\/p>\n

One video depicted Trump as a superhero wielding Green Lantern\u2019s ring to effortlessly build a wall to keep out migrants and erect a slew of busy factories. Another post showed him in a U.S. hockey uniform looming over Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as Carney cowered on the ice. And another had Trump on a military ship as it bombarded an enemy fleet.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s allure has always relied on a mythical version of himself, from \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d to the White House, but the gap between meme and reality has become glaringly stark ahead of the midterm elections.<\/a> Most U.S. adults are unhappy with Trump\u2019s handling of the economy<\/a> and say the Iran war hasn\u2019t been worth it<\/a>, but Trump has responded with outlandish images of himself as unstoppable and omnipotent.<\/p>\n

Memes risk sidestepping reality<\/p>\n

Some of the pictures are generated with artificial intelligence, and the administration has previously defended the memes as funny and their critics as humorless. Yet the stakes right now are serious for congressional Republicans who have tied their own fate to a president with low approval numbers. Trump\u2019s party will put him center stage<\/a> at an unusual midterm convention on Wednesday and Thursday in Dallas in hopes of stoking voters\u2019 enthusiasm. <\/p>\n

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist, said that Trump\u2019s social media posts can energize his base of \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d followers, although the tradeoff is that he\u2019s not talking about how to fix inflation.<\/p>\n

The voters who are likely to determine control of Congress in the midterms \u201care not going to be won over with memes,\u201d Madden said. \u201cThe affordability voter is driving this election cycle and the issues they care about are anchored in the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment. Trump sometimes plucks memes from a sprawling ecosystem of online conservative supporters, and sometimes his government staff produces them as part of their official messaging. Recently they created a series of old-school video games<\/a>, such as a \u201cTetris\u201d knockoff called \u201cBuild the Wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memes will continue,\u201d Kaelan Dorr, a member of the White House communications team, recently posted on social media. \u201cThe winning will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Your guide to the biggest stories in politics, policy and U.S. elections.\n <\/p>\n

Aging presidents promote vitality online<\/p>\n

The problem for Trump is that voters have other images they\u2019re using to define him. Drivers can spot through their windshields that gasoline is averaging $4.15 a gallon, up nearly 30% from a year ago because of the Iran war. And social media is inundated with questions about the 80-year-old president\u2019s health and vitality, spurred by pictures of his bruised hands or video clips of him appearing to fall asleep<\/a> in meetings.<\/p>\n

White House officials have said the bruising is caused by \u201cfrequent handshaking\u201d<\/a> and Trump\u2019s aspirin regimen, and they\u2019ve denied that he\u2019s dozed off. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s predecessor, Joe Biden, is three years older and faced relentless scrutiny about his age while in office. His White House came to embrace a meme version of Biden with lasers for eyes, suggesting that he was powerful and focused rather than infirm.<\/p>\n

Andrew Bates, who was a deputy press secretary for Biden, said that Trump\u2019s memes seem to be about avoiding the actual responsibilities of governing. He said they risk angering voters who see Trump as more focused on redecorating the White House than bringing the Iran war to a successful end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a president who ran on bringing gas prices under $2 a gallon is now saying, \u2018You\u2019re at four dollars, it\u2019s OK,\u2019 it unfortunately makes sense that he\u2019s also posting fever dreams,\u201d Bates said.<\/p>\n

Some memes have caused trouble <\/p>\n

The memes have occasionally gotten Trump into trouble. He posted an image of himself as Jesus in April, which caused a degree of consternation among some supporters. The president later claimed<\/a> he thought the image showed him as a medical doctor \u2014 albeit a doctor in Biblical robes with light emanating from his hands. <\/p>\n

In February, his account posted a racist video<\/a> of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as primates, which he deleted after a backlash. <\/p>\n

Last October, Trump shared a video of him in a fighter jet dumping feces on Americans who were protesting his policies.<\/p>\n

What the memes have not done so far is boost his wider approval ratings. Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of how he is handling the job of being president, according to a July AP-NORC poll.<\/p>\n

But the polling also hits at a reason why he might be sending the memes to rally his core supporters. Just 15% of U.S. adults strongly approve of his presidency, the poll found, a slight decline from 22% shortly after he took office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 In the real world, President Donald Trump is struggling to stop inflation, rout the Iranian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1801,63397,28066,439,16505,17,162,133,407,592,2056,200,11040,3242,12992,63396,635,111,63398,7544,113,5996],"class_list":["post-201685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-2026-elections","tag-andrew-bates","tag-ap-top-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-barack-obama","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-inflation","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-war","tag-joe-biden","tag-kevin-madden","tag-labor","tag-mark-carney","tag-media-ratings","tag-midterm-elections","tag-politics","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}